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t V \ ' r ; K ) 
 
 JEWISH BOOKS. 
 BLOCH PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 NCW/ VORK. 
 
GIFT OF 
 .'Ir s • G-l v^d^r s T^p.pcsov 
 
 ni 
 
DISCOURSES 
 
 BY 
 
 EMIL G. HIRSCH 
 
 Rabbi Sinai Congregation, Chicago 
 
 CONTENTS: 
 
 < 1. The Jews and Jesus. 
 
 ^ 2. JcDus, llio Life and TimJO . 
 
 3 The Doctrinco of Jesus . 
 -^ 4*. Paul, the Apostle of Heathen Judaism. 
 ^ 5. V V - hy Am I a Jcwr?" (l) 
 6. W - hy Am 1 a Jew? (11) 
 -% 7. The Inalienable Duties of Man. (1) 
 •^ 8, The Inalienable Duties of Man. (11) 
 C 9 Myth, Miracle and Midrash, 
 "10 TlK Bible in the Light of Modern Sn enre.. 
 -^11. The Place of the Individual in Organized 
 
 Charity. ^ 
 
 v:i2. Some Tendencies of the Modern Drama. 
 '13 Attacks on Jews and Judaism. 
 "14. J udaism and the lligh i? r Criticism . 
 15 The Dnrtrini^ ^f F^rni"tinn ind .ludaism . 
 16. Judaism and M u dcrn Religi o n . 
 17 The God of Isra el' . 
 -:i 18 Concordance of Judaism and Am ericani sm. 
 19* R u sponsibility for the Rui >M aii MajGacr f?^. 
 % 20. Reform Judaism and Unitarianism. 
 
 Bloch Publishing Company 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
>X-' 
 
 
THe Jevvrs and Jes\is 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 BY 
 
 EMIl^ O. HIR.SCH 
 
 The Reform Advocate 
 
 Bloch &. Newman, Publishers 
 
 204 Dearborn Street. - - - Chicago, III 
 
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THE JEWS AND JESUS. 
 
 On might suppose that the Jew had been long enough 
 before the world at large to be fully understood and 
 to be justly estiraated. But it seems that for many 
 circling decades to come^ the Jcav will have to be resigned 
 to the fate not to be kown^ to figure as an archaeological 
 specimen for some kindly disposed loersons, to serve 
 as a target for poisoned arrows, drawn from the quiver 
 of malevolent minds: in one word, forever to be mis- 
 represented — not merely by such' as close their eyes will- 
 iugly to the brighter truth — but alas ! even by others 
 whose heart beats with rare loyalty to whatever is good, 
 noble and uplifting. The books of all ages are wit- 
 nesses to this sad lot, which has befallen the Jew. We 
 cannot complain, therefore, that only in modem days 
 this bitter tide has visited the son of Israel. What 
 makes this experience in recent months more galling, 
 is the contrast presented by the treatment accorded to 
 the Jew, and the general drift of modern thought; is 
 the disappointment keenly edged by the reflection that 
 our hopes and expectations soar so high, while actual 
 conduct still stilts in low planes. Whatever else may be 
 said about the Jew and his religion, this one thing 
 seems to be taken for granted, needing no further in- 
 spection or proof, that the Jew by his very religion, 
 is led to be hostile to Christianity; that the Jewish 
 lieart bulges with hatred for all that is not labeled Jew- 
 ish, and that especially he whose name for millions of 
 
 M18292 
 
humaii beings tokens the very highest, is sj^urned and 
 &(^cI*Acd Xv'ith bittei* contempt by the devoted descend- 
 ' ants of Abraham, now as ever iDefore. Nothing^ how- 
 ever, can be further from tlic truth than this. Cer- 
 tainly the literature of Judaism ought to be taken into 
 account before this sweeping verdict of condemnation 
 is apodictically pronounced; and if there be those to 
 whom tlie literature of Judaism is a sealed book, they 
 should remember the canon of honesty that no one may 
 speak of things of wliich, by the nature of their proc- 
 lamation, he must be ignorant. It is a very comfort- 
 able but very cheap method with unperturbed self- 
 assurance to repeat old errors, to voice old prejudices; 
 but will an honest man indulge in these tactics? He 
 will spurn to huckster in never so venerable prejudices 
 unless convinced that their basis is the granite of fact, 
 as revealed by an honest endeavor to probe things to 
 the hard pan at the l)ottom. Tliose who have studied, 
 or are competent to do so, the old Jewish literature, 
 cannot with good conscience repeat the charge, that 
 the Jew, by his very religion is prompted to cherish 
 the spirit of hostility to all other religions. They can- 
 not again lend word to the unjust though old indict- 
 ment, tliat the Jew, rejecting the prophet of ISTazareth, 
 heaps upon this name, which is symbol of truth and 
 emblem of love for millions, contempt and scorn. 
 
 Tow^ard Christianity Judaism as a religion, even 
 orthodox Judaism, has always preserved an attitude of 
 kindliest fairness. Wliatever laws may be found in the 
 old rabbinnical codes bearing upon idolatry, atheism, 
 blasphemy, and the whole ilk and brood of breaches of 
 religious rectitude of this black order. Christianity was 
 always officially and most emphatically declared not 
 
 2 
 
to be one of the company of religions or rather 
 irreligious systems to which the laws and regu- 
 lations in question^ enacted to stem the tide of 
 idolatiy and blasjjhemy, could apply. E. Joseph 
 Caro is certainly a trustworthy exponent of 
 Jewish orthodoxy of the most uncompromising stamp. 
 In his "Beth-Joseph/^ a ritual code of high authority 
 ('Hoshon Mishpat^ 266)^ he says: ''The non-Jews D'T^ 
 of our days do not belong to the category denoted in 
 the Talmud as 'Akkum^ and none of the laws enacted 
 against these is applicable to them.'^ And his view 
 and express statement has i)assed into the preface of 
 well nigh all editions of the Shul'han-Arukh. Chris- 
 tianity is by Jewish orthodoxy, even, recognized to l)e 
 a monotheistic religion. It is accorded willingly the 
 function of having been among God's appointed agents 
 to carry the light of monotheism out into the darkened 
 world. Men who are at home in medieval Jewish lit- 
 erature need no longer assurance to quiet whatever ap- 
 prehensions they might offhandedly have entertained on 
 this score. Time will not allow us to give ear to more 
 than a few voices composing the chorus, sounding in all 
 centuries and comitries the same glad song of tolerant 
 recognition. Eabbi Jacob Emden, of Altona (1698- 
 1776), puts the conception of the rabbis most pithily 
 when he says : "Christianity was founded for the hea- 
 the^, not as a new religion, but as the old, which com^ 
 manded the keeping of the seven N"oa''hidic (funda- 
 mental moral) laws, that had fallen into oblivion among 
 the nations, and tiiercfore were proclaimed anew by 
 the Christian apostles.'' "The Christians/' says an- 
 other, E. Isaac ben Shcshct (1400-1440), "are to be con- 
 sidered as ^trrn ^"i:i proselytes." These sentiments 
 
 3 
 
and similar expressions abound in tlic writings of the 
 old Jewish teachers. Every tyro in that field of learn- 
 ing is acqiiaiiitixl with this glorious abundance of tes- 
 timony to similar purport.* 
 
 The Jews had no reason to love or to hate the foundei* 
 of Christianity. They might have had provocation lo 
 hate, those who prot-nded to be his followers; for the 
 histoiy of the Jews beginning with the Christian era 
 clear cIotntq to this latest day, is but a succession of per- 
 secutions, such as no other set of human beings has been 
 called upon to endure. I^To other religion was tried so 
 sorely by another faith, her own daughter, officially at 
 least professed by men in power. Talk of Asiatic bru- 
 tality; of African barbarism! Why, what the savage 
 tribes commit in their rude ignorance is kindness com- 
 l)ared to what was practiced upon the Jews ! Need T 
 go into details? >Scarce a year passed from the third 
 Christian century to the French Eevolution, but some- 
 where in Europe, in the very name of Christianit}^, 
 Jews were sliuglitered by the thousands. Innocence 
 is no protection; weakness is no armor; wisdom affords 
 no escape ; old age does not stay the hand that would 
 strike! With fire and dungeon; with rack and torture, 
 they come, — the pretended apostles of a religion of 
 love! Al^s, the provocation to hate was ample; but 
 nevertheless Christianity was not hated! Hatred must 
 be made of sterner stuff than the estimate of Christian- 
 ity's ]irovidential mission which again and again fin(is 
 place in the l)ooks of rabbinical writers ! is it hatred 
 that prompted one, f. i., to say : ^'The founder of Chris- 
 
 *Hambtirger's Encyclopedia, Suppl. II, under the cap- 
 tion, "Christen," has collected most of the passages in 
 this roll of honor. 
 
 4 
 
tianity has conferred a twofold benefaction upon tlie 
 world; on the one hand, he emphasized the eternal 
 obligation of the law of Moses, on the other he led the 
 heathen from idolatry to the knowledge of the (seven) 
 laws of morality''? Tlie Jews in the middle as^es 
 would gladly have refrained from discussing Christian- 
 ity, had they been permitted so to do. The silence 
 al30ut Jgsus in the Talmud is significant- Few are the 
 per onal references to him, though in an indirect man- 
 ner the doctors of the Talmud show that they are, to 
 a certain extent, accjuainted with his labors, as related 
 in tlie tradition-, probably not yet rigidly crystalized, 
 of his followers. Under the coyer of Balaam's name, 
 they assign to him a prophetic mission. Controversies, 
 indeed, are recorded with the adherents of the rising 
 new sect. But these run not along the line of Jesus's 
 personality but of dogmatic differences or of the cor- 
 rect interpretation of Biblical passages. A broad tol- 
 erance marks even Talmudical polemics. In post-Tal- 
 mudic centuries, the Jews enter the lists only as forced 
 combatants. Bishops and prelates, kings and counts 
 cited the Jewish scholars to dangerous disputations. In 
 defense, not in defiance, do the rabbis take part in the 
 combat. They are not the assailants, but alwa3's the 
 assailed ! That they should take advantage of all re- 
 sources of logic or learning, none will reckon to their 
 blame. Tli? controversies turn largely on so-called 
 Messianic prophecies. ^NTo wonder, then, that also tha 
 commentators on the passages where Jewish interpre- 
 tants took their own conrsel and differed radically from 
 the constructions of the Cliristian, should have em- 
 braced tlie opportunity to speak somewhat at length 
 on the points in issue. Xor is it surprising that Jew- 
 
 5 
 
ish thinkers in treating of doctrinal chapters have. In 
 defining tlic j^osition of Judaisjn, occasionally made 
 excursions into the domain of Christian theology. But, 
 for the most part, this is done in a spirit of reserve 
 and becoming dignity. As far as I know, the name of 
 the founder of Cliristianity is but rarely mentioned 
 by the Jewish debaters and writers. And where it is, 
 it is without any manifestation of what might be mis- 
 construed into contempt or scorn, though, of course, 
 the absence of any peculiar reverence is also noticeable. 
 Jesus is generally cited as •n^^'^^n the "Nazarene." 
 A certain familiarity with the Xew Testament is also 
 displayed on the part of some, if not all, Jewish con- 
 trovertants. Whatever there may have been of bitter- 
 ness in these coinpulsory polemics was caused b}^ the 
 Jewish apostates. These worthies, then as now, deemed 
 it rnre sport to '*^cast stones into the very well from 
 which they liad driink.^' Often blatant ignoramuses;, 
 always dishonest self-seekers, they had no compunction 
 to twist into nets and snares for Judaism and the Jews 
 ihe fcarbled or disflirured knowledge they possessed of 
 the faith of their fathers. These foul knaves, the rabbis 
 werj called to meet. Tliey would have been super- 
 human had they altogether suppressed the rising indig- 
 nation at this insult added to injury. There is, how- 
 ever, one black exception to this unbroken rule of dig- 
 i^ified controversy, so far as the Jews had a share in it. 
 Some time before the J)th century, further than this the 
 date cannot be determined, appeared a pasquille of the 
 vilest sort, '^Tol'doth Jeshu" (Life of Jesus), purport- 
 ing to give the story of the great T^azarene. Its origi- 
 nal language was probably the aramaian, and Syria may 
 have been the home of the author. This Apocryphon 
 
 6 
 
is a cesspool of all nastiness, of fabrications out of the 
 whole clot]]; the respoEsibility for it Judaism declines 
 to shoulder, as its sentiments are not now, and never 
 were,, shared by the Jews. 
 
 It stands to reason that with the birth of modern 
 science and new investigations in the domain of relig- 
 ious thought, history and literature, the attention of 
 Jewish scholars was no less attracted to nascent Chris- 
 tianity than was that of non- Jewish students. 
 
 Before there was a call for Jewish historians to deal 
 with the life and the character of the carpenter's son of 
 Bethlehem, historical studies had first to make their 
 influences felt in and out of Judaism. It is merely in 
 modern time that the comparative science of religion 
 has been ushered into blessed utility. Only within the 
 last sixty years have scholars found themselves moved 
 to trace back the course of religious development, and 
 to peep if possible into the laboratory of history, whence 
 those peculiar forces are sent forth on their errand, 
 which we spell by the name of this or that religious 
 movement. Only A^dthin the last sixty or seventy year'*, 
 or perhaps we may go as far back as Lessing, was there 
 any occasion to search into the part or function pla3^ed 
 by the great personalities ^vhose names are thundering 
 down the vestilniles of time, in that great ocean styled 
 by us, crrowing, moving, striving humanity. Before the 
 method of these studies and their relation to the growth 
 of ideas, potent in human evolution, had been discov- 
 ered, there was no occasion for the JeAvish thinker to 
 devote time and attention to the life and the character 
 of the founder of a religion not his own. Certainly the 
 thinkers of the middle ages could not be attracted to 
 go into this field by the promise of finding there a sweet 
 . ' 7 
 
grain which did not wave in their home acres. The 
 contrast was pressed upon them most painfully, that if 
 what Christianity presented to the Jew was love, the 
 law of the Jews was much better than the thus pre- 
 tended higher revelation. Tlie Jew must have pos- 
 sessed at home whatever he needed to make life sweet. 
 Say what you will of the Judaism of the middle ages, 
 call it narrow, deride it as superstitious, denounce it 
 as slavery to form, unless lost to all sense of justice, 
 or without the power to dive beneath the surface of 
 the seeming, to tlie roots of the real, you cannot but 
 witness to the incontrovertible fact that for sweetness 
 and spirituality of life, the Jew of the Ghetto, the Jew 
 of the middle ages, the Jew under the yoke of the Tal- 
 mud, challenges the whole world. Xo life is sweeter and 
 at the same time stronger than theirs. In their home 
 glowed the chaste flame of love; in their heart leaped 
 upward the blaze of aspiration. Talk of martyrdom ! 
 It has become fashionable for the liberal j^latform lec- 
 turers to make much of the story of the great heroes 
 who died for the intellectual freedom of the world, 
 beginning with Socrates and Jesus ; through the darker 
 ages to the dawn of the Reformation, and enumerating 
 the many stars whose light went out in the blaze oi' 
 the funeral pyre, or whose life blood oozed away under 
 the executioner's axo, they finally w^ind up with a special 
 eclat mth Spinoza, that victim of the intense bigotrv, 
 as our liberal platform lecturers would have it, which 
 nowhere else but in the narrow synagogue could have 
 asserted itself. Certainly, the memory of these is hal- 
 lowed forever! But for martyrdom and devotion to 
 principle the lot of the Jew and his fortiturle are to 
 the fate and steadfastness of Socrates and Spinoza, a 
 
 8 
 
crown diamonc] compared to the paste imitation on the 
 ring of a low, vulgar gambler, ^o other record of 
 heroism for principle's sake is so bright and inspiring 
 as are the tear-stained scrolls, the "Memoir Books/" 
 chronicling the slangliter of the Jews in the middle 
 ages. Heroism of this kind is spiritual in the highest 
 degree; and therefore for the spirit's chastening or 
 sweetening influence the Jew found no necessity to go 
 beyond his own religious temple, and to look for ex- 
 ample beyond his own religious community. A religion 
 that could make life worth living, with its hopes de- 
 ferred and its duties redoubled, under such distressing 
 circumstances, was religion strong and sweet enough. 
 Its adherents had no need to hunger for bread other 
 than their own teaching. What they needed was pro- 
 vided in the synagogue and within the walls of their 
 own contracted home. Yea, their home was filled with 
 a peace which the world could not give, and which tha 
 world could not take away. 
 
 Only in modern times, when scholars began to in- 
 vestigate the processes which resulted in these grand 
 movements, the positive religions of modern day, did 
 also Jewish scholars waken to the profitableness of de- 
 voting thought and time to the life, the labors and the 
 character of the prophet of Xazareth. Xot merely we, 
 the liberals, have willingly accepted the invitation to 
 study that chapter of our histor}', which more than any 
 other has affected civilization, but the more conserva- 
 tive, yea, even the orthodox, have with equal zeal, and 
 with total absence of prejudice, investigated these por- 
 tentous days, when, according to common tradition. 
 Jesus taught in the synagogues of Galilee, and died at 
 Golgotha," a victim of Eoman politics and of priestly 
 1 9 
 
intrigue. All of us are agreed, waving even the ques- 
 tion of the historical authenticity of the gospels, that 
 Jesus was a noble character; that in him quivered the 
 fullest measure of spirituality; that he helieved in his 
 own destiny and duty; that he taught a high life. But 
 all of us are also agreed in this: that what he taught 
 was not a revelation new to the synagogues; for neither 
 in his morality nor in his religious hope did he advance 
 one step beyond the teachings of contemporaneous Ju- 
 daism. 
 
 He cannot lay claim to originality; what he teaches 
 is the echo of the doctrines he himself had heard from 
 the lips of his own Jewish masters; what lived ani 
 moved and stiiTcd in him, that lived as fully in the 
 hearts of many others in those days. He was distin- 
 guished for his love for the common people; in him 
 beat a heart attuned to the higher possibilities of the 
 human kind. For him. religion was not altogether form 
 and ceremony; it was devotion and duty. But for all 
 tliis, he did not stand on a higher altitude than did the 
 teachers of his own days, teachers in the synagogue ; 
 teachers that never dreamed, as indeed he never did 
 dream, to hold a commission from on high to bring to 
 the world a new light. "We grant, for argument's sake, 
 that he lived and labored during the critical period to 
 which the gospels assign him, — though this has been 
 doubted ; — we take, without furtlier inquiry, the state- 
 ments of the gospels as they are. With these data a 
 conclusion is forced upon one in the least familiar with 
 the Jewish thought of that time, that in what and how 
 he taught and prayed, in his hopes and his illusion^, 
 — in no particular did he set himself in opposition to 
 the synagogues of his day. Nor did he rise to a higher 
 
 10 
 
plane of religious u23look than had risen many of his 
 predecessors; many of those among whom he lived. The 
 Lord's Prayer is indeed a wreath of the most beautiful 
 flowers of the Jewish liturgy. It has- become the most 
 IDOwerful inspiration of all times. But in that casket, 
 containing so many jewels, there is not a single gem 
 but had graced in one form or other the crown worn 
 by the synagogue. Some, even professional liberal lec- 
 turers, in season and out of season^ tell their admiring 
 friends — and strange to say, among these the Jews pre- 
 dominate — that such a thought as "Our Father -which 
 art in Heaven," could never have crossed the lips of a 
 Jew, bound in the fetters of the Judaism of this ol- 
 any other age, — yea, the Judaism of our day not 
 excepted. It is true tlie Christian theological semi- 
 naries never weary of teaching this fallacy. Probably 
 these liberal lecturers, notwithstanding their profuse 
 profession to have overcome the limitations of their 
 early Presbyterian education, have remained derelict 
 to the ethical duty to revise their stock of information 
 carried avray from school. And thus, with an assurance 
 that among Jews would be characterized by the word 
 n^'jfir they repeat in season and out of season, ih} 
 slander that Judaism can never unseal the lips of its 
 rlevotees to stammer forth the sublime, the inspiring: 
 invocation. "Our Father which art in Heaven." It is 
 a pity, indeed, that historical truth compels us to spoil 
 these ethical lecturers' stock in trade. There is not an 
 old Siddur, an old prayer-book but has this very appeal 
 to God, D''t2trri:' ir^K ''Our Father which art in 
 Heaven"; and the Jewish prayers which begin in this 
 wise are not posterior to the period when the Lord's 
 Prayer became Iniown ; if anything, they precede in 
 
 11 
 
time the composition and the promulgation of the New 
 Testament formula. 
 
 Judaism then has not learned the thought, "Our 
 Father which art in Heaven," from the mouth of Jesus, 
 but Jesus learned it from the lips of Judaism. "Ah !" 
 says now the ethical lecturer, and those that make ft 
 parade of their liberalism, either ignorant of the facts 
 in point or willingly blind to them, "Our Father which 
 art in Heaven, in the petition of the Jew, signifies the 
 father of the Jews ; no one else is God's son except the 
 Jew." Again, in urging this error in the defense of 
 his first, the former Presbyterian clergyman reveals 
 that though he may have been a student at the theo- 
 logical seminary, he has never grasped his Old Testa- 
 ment — a collection of writings which certainly a clergy- 
 man, and a liberal lecturer without question should hav-j 
 read. Did not one of the later pro])hets living at least 
 four hundred or five hundred years before Chrstianity 
 call out: "Have we not all one Father? Has not one 
 God made us all?" Are there not in this old Bible, 
 psalms of the broadest fellowship, or books which 
 breathe the fire of indignant protest against the thought 
 that God was merely the God of the Israelites; that 
 God had no care for the strangers, or love for members 
 of other nationalities? No ; Avhatever may be said about 
 Jewish exclusivity and national pride, the charge must 
 be dismissed for want of evidence, while Judaism caM 
 easily prove her case. Her genius is toward universal 
 fellowship. Jewish universalism is quick at all times; 
 is quick even in Talmudic Judaism; quick in the Juda- 
 ism of today. Long before the great teacher of Naza- 
 reth went out to clothe in sound the thought of the 
 universal fathei-hood, had Judaism conceived of h; 
 
 12 
 
taught it at liome; had proclaimed it to the whole 
 world. "Our Father which art in Heaven/' whatevor 
 construction may be put upon the phrase, is bone of 
 our bone, flesh of our flesh. The appeal was not new 
 for us, no new revelation for the synagogue, however 
 new it may have been for the non-Jewish world. 
 
 It has been urged that Jesus proclaimed himself '^th,? 
 son of man'^ in distinction to those who continued to 
 call themselves sons of Abraham, sons of Judah, sons 
 of Hellas, sons of Eome. The critical student, both of 
 the biography of Jesus and of the old Je^Wsh records, 
 must shake his head in pitv^ for the ignorance, or !ri 
 anger for the presumption of those that would trestle 
 on such weak supports their airy constructions. If it 
 must be accepted, for the moment let us accept it^ — 
 that th.e phrase "son of man," has this point : Jesus 
 is cosmopolitan; he has risen above the narrow limita- 
 tions of nationality and locality, race and blood; again, 
 our- old Bible, our old Testament, by six hundred A'ear- 
 is his prec'ecessor, in bringing this thought to a focus. 
 Does not Ezekiel, the prophet of the approaching res- 
 toration, the priest drafting the plan of the temple 
 about to be rebuilt, and of the priesthood to be reorgan- 
 ized, call himself ^:}j'< ]! son of man? If this title 
 tokens universality, Ezekiel assuming it is entitled to 
 the priority by many generations. At all events this 
 universal thought is not an exotic flower in Judaism. 
 On the other hand, however, it cannot be urged thfit 
 Jesus in using the title "son of man," had at all m 
 mind this universalism. For the very Jesus who is 
 now set up as a type of the man of universal sympathies, 
 cautions his own disciples not to preach the word to 
 non-Israelites. He does not travel in Samaria, becau^^c^ 
 
 13 
 
Samaria is defiled. He warns against throwing the 
 bread to the strangers. He would have it di- 
 vided among the chihlren of his own jjeople. lie 
 talks about casting ^'pearls before swine" — meaning 
 thereby the non-Jews. Whatever construction we may 
 place upon the title '*^son of man" we are confronted by 
 the dilemma either to grant that before Jesus's time 
 the title and tliercfore its implication was assumed by 
 one of our own prophets or that even Jesus was preju- 
 diced — shared all the old national prejudices of his 
 kinsmen. The gospels, purporting to report liis sayings, 
 make him out to be a Jew, national to the core, national 
 in his sympathies; proclaiming his doctrines to th(; 
 Jews and the Jews alone ; delighting in being the shep- 
 herd of Israel, and not of the lost sheep of other flocks. 
 But our philological conscience cannot but register its 
 }'rotest against urging the title ^^son of man" to mean, 
 son of all humanity. The phrase is Aramaic. In the 
 Hebrew of Ezekiel which begins to take an Aramaic 
 coloring, it occurs as well. Both in Htebrew w JX ]Z and 
 in Aramaic 1^*3*^ it cannot be construed to mean aught 
 I'ut simply human being. Jesus speaks of himself a^ 
 the ''son of man," if any protest was in his thought, it 
 would have been none other than against the imputation 
 of divinity to him. He is the simple.^man." In reality 
 the gospels follow consciously in this, as in many morp 
 points, the precedent of the Hebrew scriptures. Be- 
 cause Ezekiel was so denoted, the writers of the Xew 
 Testament use the phrase to describe Jesus. The com- 
 pounds with "13 in Aramaic are in sense mere adjectives. 
 ^'Son of Man" is in English radically at variance witii 
 the sense of the Hebrew w':^ i3 or the Aramaic U:'^2 
 'J'he Hebrew phrase, with the word son, and the similar 
 
 14 
 
Aramaic construction^ are idiomatic expressions. In 
 English and in other modern tongues^ and in Latin and 
 Greek we shoukl employ adjectives. "Son of man'^ in 
 Hebre^y conveys to one familiar with the genius of the 
 language the notion of our English '^'human.^' Thus if 
 that phrase has any bearing other than literal, its force 
 lies in the himianity, in contradistinction to the di- 
 vinity, of Jesus. I 
 
 But the morality of Jesus is perhaps broader than 
 that of the synagogue ! Certainly no one before Jesus 
 ims said — sa3's our liberal lecturer of the Ethical 
 Culture Society, the liberal preacher of the Unitarians, 
 and others, — no one in the synagogue ever could have 
 said, 'Tove thy neiglibor like thyself;'^ "Do unto others 
 as you would have them do unto you.'^ Did none be- 
 fore Jesus preach this altruism? Can we overlook Con- 
 fucius? But of Confucius the Jews knew nothing at 
 that time. AYere the Jews then ignorant of the prin- 
 ciple? The book of Tobit was composed about three 
 hundred years before the Christian era; it contains the 
 "golden rule.^' Is it then taken from the Xew Testa- 
 ment? The book in which it is found is older than the 
 Xew Testament, the conclusion which is the original is 
 TiOt difficult to draw. Moreover our own Hillel, sum- 
 med up his religion in this epitome of ethics : "Love 
 thy neighbor like thyself.'' "What is hateful to thee do 
 not do to thy fellow.'' "This is Judaism, all the rest is 
 commentary," said he to the heathen, come to be con- 
 verted, m^rZw V*: '^Sd HT this was the fundamental 
 proprosition of the law. ''Go and study the commen- 
 tary!" Whose now is the prioritv^ Hillel's or Jcsus's? 
 Consult the tables of chronology ! Judaism as con- 
 ceived of by Hilkl had on this point nothing to learn 
 
 15 
 
from Jesus. But "Judaism never loved the enemy; 
 never was it said bv tliem of old^ 'Love your enemy/'' 
 Perliaps not in so many words! But was this precept 
 ever practiced by the Christians? Exclusion is certain- 
 ly a strange demonstration of one's love. Exclusion of 
 tlie descendants of fathers falsely charged w^ith a crime 
 which they never had committed, from political life and 
 civil rights, ostraci^^m from society, refusal of hospitality 
 at public inns, — these are indeed symptoms of a love? 
 so strange as to pass all understanding. And then they 
 talk of love to their enemies, when they cannot even love 
 those wlio are not their enemies! It seems, tlicn, tli;it 
 the Christians no less than others have not been very 
 attentive to the words of Jesus. Let the Christians first 
 learn and practise the doctrines of the Mount, before in 
 blindne.-s superinduced by a beam in their own eye, they 
 would reproach others for the mote in theirs! As a 
 matter of fact, however, the Jews have practiced this 
 '%ve'^ for the enemy, and have abhorred 'iiatred.'' Xot 
 in a spirit of boastfulness do I say this. You know- 
 that I protest against this spirit of boastfulness, in sea- 
 son and out of season, perhaps more strongly than is 
 to your liking. Justice, however, warrants tlie claim, 
 the Jews did love those that hated them and were taught 
 to return good for evil. In the Jewish law, it is said 
 that if enemy and friend need tlie helping hand, the; 
 enemy shall be the first, not the friend, to receive aid. 
 Such is Jewish, Talmudic ethics. Is it then a de- 
 parture from the truth, to hold that Judaism recognizv:^^ 
 tlie precci^t, ''Thou shalt love thine enemy?" Was it 
 not a principle of the synagogues? The Jews certainly 
 have ])Tact.iced it. AVhere was ever Jew whose philan- 
 thropy was not broader than race oiw creed lines? Our 
 
 16 
 
hospitals and training schools are open to all alike. Is 
 the Christian civilization under the Czar's benevolent 
 sceptre an illustration of Christian love? Was it love 
 tliat made homeless millions of, human beings who hap- 
 pened to be of one race with the Xazarene? Is it love 
 that confines as many more to a territory where there is 
 no room for them to live but must rot and die of slow 
 starv^ation? And our [Jnited States Government is 
 willing to do detective work for this organized barbar- 
 ism, that not content to have thousands in the Siberian 
 mines, upon whom to vent a superabundance of love, is 
 yearning to stretch forth its arms across the ocean in 
 search for other victims of its attachment. When the 
 Czar's name is mentioned at the banquets we rise to do 
 him honor, this despot of Asiatic power. But let a 
 Jewish American venture to plan a visit to this our 
 "friendV^ dominion. At the frontier he is told he must 
 stay out. And indeed, who would not be glad to stay 
 out of that hell, that house of bondage ! Yet oui 
 United States Senator would return thither all whose 
 only offence is to have forged a paper which alone gave 
 them the privilege to get out under the wings of the 
 Ixussian majesty's paternal care ! 
 
 We are not enemies of Russia ; but in this way we are 
 treated. Contrast Russian love with our Jewish hatred. 
 Had we, to leani the lesson of love, to scan the Xew 
 Testament! It seems those that profess to be sworn 
 interpreters of the New Testament have not learned it. 
 But the Jews with nothing but the Old Testament and 
 the Talmud seem practically to have applied love as the 
 law that binds us, nay, the vaster family of humanity. 
 
 The other principles too, in which the ethics of Jesus 
 are said to b^- different from ours have never yet been 
 
 17 
 
practically carried out anywhere on earth. Why have 
 the machinery of courts when according to the etliics ot! 
 New Testament Christianity tlie murderer should not be 
 punished; the thief should be encouraged; the man that 
 strikes one blow should be asked to strike a second? 
 We have the teacher's own word to this effect. Xo 
 quibble can lift us over this hard and fast 
 fact. Tlie ethics of Jesus teach non-resistance. Early 
 Christianity reflects a communistic form of society. 
 ^'Sell all that thou hast and follow me V' is the answer 
 given by Jesus to the rich young man anxious to join 
 liis band of disciples. In his kingdom, as he foresaw it, 
 there w^as no need of money; there was need for love. 
 The early Christians lived in communistic organizations 
 and associations. This is a matter of historical record. 
 Tlie boast of many, indeed, is that they live in accord- 
 ance with the Sermon on the Mount, their boast is not 
 verified by their actions. The so-called disciples of 
 Christ have not accepted these social doctrines; they 
 have not lived by them, and we have not either more or 
 less than they, but we never claimed to have accepted aa 
 of divine origin those social principles. 
 
 But why, if Jesus was so truly at one with the 
 spiritual elements of Judaism — why was he crucified? 
 To state the matter in brief.. the Jews as a whole did not 
 sympathize with his executioners and were not respon-- 
 si])le for that crime. Among the Jews there was but 
 one faction that conspired with the Romans to silence 
 this tongue that spoke the message of hope to the down- 
 trodden and enslaved. That small faction was not as 
 you might suppose recruited from the Pharisees. Jesus 
 probably belonged to no party. Men of genius do not: 
 wear the uniform of any party; they are a party in 
 
 18 
 
themselves; a jDower in their own self-centered indi- 
 viduality. But. the Pharisees had no reason to be dis- 
 satisfied with him. A^liatever he lays down in his inter- 
 pretations of tile law is sound pharisaical doctrine. To 
 break the Sabbath for the sake of saving life is a posi- 
 tive command of the Pharisee not a new view and a 
 larger liberty Christianity brought about through Jesu^ 
 and his disciples. We Jews have certainly learned the 
 old (Jewish) truth : The Sabbath is made for man, not 
 3nan for the Sabbath. Our official Christianity, how- 
 ever, needs again a Jesus to recall this vital thought to 
 its memorv. But the rich amonsr the Jews, the Sad- 
 ducees, the high priestly famil}^, with whose monopoly 
 to sell at high prices the sacrificial beasts in the Temple 
 rmd to exchansje at usurious rates the foreio-n coins for 
 the home shekels that could only be accepted in the 
 Temple — these usurers and gamblers in holy things had 
 found in Jesus one who with whip scourged their 
 wretched agents from the Temple. These conspired 
 with their friend Pontius Pilate to put an end to this 
 man that had become so exceedingly inconvenient to 
 tliem. Such saints there are to be found at all times, in 
 all sects. To-day yet there are denominations who Avill 
 not have tlieir preachers interfere with their trusts and 
 monojjolirs. To-day there are Jews who would crucify 
 iheir rabbi, who dares to call out in protest against 
 gambling and money tyranny of whatever kind. To- 
 day there are those of whatever nation, wdio call for the 
 police and the army whenever the preacher presumes to 
 sound the warning that ''things are rotten in Denmark," 
 and pricks the gaudy bubble of deceptive peace wdiich is 
 internecine war. To-day they would nail to the cross 
 him who cautions to beware of a peace which arrests 
 
 19 
 
progress. They would silence him who would tell them 
 That tlieirs is the power to change things peacefully, but 
 if tlie opportunity be lost, tlie cliange will come al)out in 
 the stonn of destruction and by the rod of disaster. 
 Small wonder then, that in Jerusalem, tho::0 who 
 writhed under the lash in their rude brutality called 
 upon the Eoman general to aid them to silence this 
 rebel ; in the eyes of the Eomans, Jesns was a rebel. He 
 preached the kingdom come. 
 
 ^^Hiat did kingdom come mean? Did it point to a 
 kingdom be3^ond the clouds? It meant liberty for Ju- 
 daism ; restoration of national independence. It meant 
 the driving out of the Eomans from the sacred terri- 
 tory. This terrible import the Messianic message had 
 indeed when a few decades later tlie Jews rose up 
 against the Romans, and in despair struggled two years 
 for their freedom, to be disappointed in defeat, and to bf 
 exterminated as a nation forever. Kingdom come, then, 
 was the crying watchword against the Roman. The 
 Roman procurator and the JcAvish high priest conspired 
 against him, and without due process of law — I repeat 
 the statement — without due process of law, put to death 
 him who was the mouthpiece of the down-trodden, who 
 had trumpeted forth the hope of his people. The JewB 
 did not reject him. What he brought was their own; 
 what he taught was their own inspiration. But the 
 Pharisees, in the common sense of the word, not in the 
 true sense of the word — the hypocrites, the wealthy, the 
 priests, and the Roman governor, silenced forever that 
 man gifted with eloquence such as had come to few men. 
 
 Jesus was indeed one of those rare men that from 
 time to time visit earth, sounding with greater emphasis 
 thoughts that had been promulgated before. I have 
 
 20 
 
said — and Geiger already has raised this point in con- 
 troversy with Eenan and others — that there is no or- 
 iginality in Jesus's doctrines. As a matter of content 
 there is not; for whatever he treats of, has heen treated 
 of before. But as a matter of expression, putting the 
 matter so as to vest it with the force of almost a new 
 thought, Jesus — or whoever wrote the jSTew Testament — • 
 commands a place among the few chosen of God. The 
 rough diamond he cut and ground so that new light 
 from every facet was sent forth into the astonished 
 world. His words have the stamp of great genius; not 
 so much for what they say, as for the manner in whic'n 
 they are put forth. To the non- Jewish world, even tlui 
 thought was new; and through Jesus the non- Jewish 
 world learned a new hope, and was led to new heights. 
 Jesus, also, by the light of historical studies, must be 
 credited with a warm heart for the common people." In 
 the Judaism of those days there were three sects. First 
 the Pharisees, the aristocracy of learning despising the 
 ignorant. And one cannot sometimes help sharing or 
 pardoning their contempt for ignorance. Whoever had 
 to deal with presumptuous ignorance, will at times be 
 sorely tempted to harbor the same feeling as the old 
 Pharisees had: that learning is, after all, a privilege 
 which ISTabob and Moneybag with all their wealth and 
 resources can never pre-empt; that in the sale of hu- 
 manity, the mind well cultured weighs much more than 
 the pocket well filled. 
 
 The Pharisees were the sect of the learned men, an 
 aristocracy of scholarship ; the Sadduccees were an aris- 
 tocracy of birth, for they were the priests. To their 
 ranks was never admitted one not born of priestly par- 
 ents. They, of course, despised the common people. The 
 
 21 
 
Essencs, the third but small sect;, living under com- 
 munistic rules, were politically inditlei*ent. Men affect- 
 ing outward i)urity by their dress, they shunned cer- 
 tainly the touch of the common people, i'or the very 
 hem of the garment of an outsider might delile them. 
 
 'Ihe common ^Krople were thus despised by Pharisee, 
 Sadducee and Essene. But the prophet of Js^azareth 
 loved the common 2>eoi->it?;» pSn ''D^ He associated 
 with the outcasts of society The guests at his table 
 were the publicans and sinners, the lost, often aban- 
 doned women. He mingled with the common people; 
 he spoke to them ; his disciples were of the common peo- 
 ple. He did not think that learning was a crown or 
 that birth did confer a diadem; that outward j^i-^i'ity 
 alone gave entrance to kingdom come. But he believed 
 that inward spirituality, and that found among all 
 classes of people, crowned with a tiara studded with jew- 
 els more costly than priestly diadem or laurel wreath 
 of learning, or rough woven garment of outward purity. 
 Among the common people he worked and labored; his 
 every thought was consecrated to them ; and no wonder 
 that his name to-day yet is the emblem of hope for the 
 down-trodden and the opjoressed of all the world. 
 
 He belongs to us. Not that we need to go to his books 
 for so-called new thought; not that we need to turn to 
 his life even for inspiration; for the Jew for fifteen 
 centuries has often had to toil up Golgotha's steep and 
 heavy ascent. We bore a cross the weight of which was 
 a thousandfold heavier than that whicli Jesus earned to 
 the place of his execution. The thorny crown; who 
 wears it? The Jew to-day; the Jew yesterday. He 
 will wear it yet to-morrow. We are prepared for new 
 torture ; wq who know what it is to be a Jew. The lash ; 
 
 22 
 
who felt it? Xot Jesus alone. Innumerable are those 
 of his kinsmen that felt the lash; who feel it to-day. 
 The gibe and jeer who has heard them? The Jew. 
 AMio has displayed steadfastness? Xot merely Jesus 
 prayed: ".Xot my will but thy will;" the Jew it was 
 who faltered not, because he knew that reservoir of 
 moral force : ''Xot my will, God, but thy will:'' ye\, 
 what but this, has been the sigh and the stay of millions 
 of Jews these fifteen hundred years of tears and tor- 
 ment? Who died with the prayer on the lip: 'Tather 
 forgive them, they know not what they are do- 
 ing?" Jesus. Who lives with the prayer on the 
 lip? The Jew. "Father forgive them, they know 
 not what they are doing," is* the poem written 
 in the stanzas of suffering by the Jews on 
 thousands and hundreds of thousands of agonizing 
 hearts. Steadfastness in the belief in his own destiny 
 and duty exemplified in the life of Jesus ! Yes, nobly 
 so ! ''If it be thy will that this cup shall pass away ;"' 
 his prayer in the awful night of Gethsemane. "If it be 
 thy will that this cup pass away," is the prayer of the 
 Jews ; has been ; is now. But steadfast they remained ; 
 they die, if it must be ; they live — if it be God's pleas- 
 ure — for principle's sake. So, what for the outer world 
 was tokened by that one life, millions of lives have eni- 
 blazoned upon our souls. We needed not higher in- 
 spiriation; we had it at home; he was the reflection of 
 Jewish inner life for which the world had waited. He 
 became its anchor and mooring. But it was Judaism 
 that sent out this torch-bearer to light up the inky dark- 
 ness. Xo; not merely the liberal Jew, but every Jew 
 who knows his o^vn history will gladly so rank the 
 teacher of JTazareth. Xo. For ignorance we Jews are 
 
 23 
 
not rcsioonsible. For the rantings and ravings of a 
 penny-a-liner on one of the daily journals of this city 
 we are not responsible. I will venture to say there was 
 never a Jew in Chicago that objected to what was said 
 from this pulpit about Jesus, the report to the contrary 
 was gotten up to make a sensation. Anything to make 
 a sensation. In dull times, head lines printed in big 
 letters about "a storm in the camp of Israel raised by 
 remarks on Jesus" attract attention. But if storm 
 there was, it was a storm in a teakettle, and I doubt 
 wliether any Jew with any pretention to culture, ob- 
 jected then or objects now to the picture of Jesus's char- 
 acter as drawn on this platform. The Jew, of what- 
 ever shade of opinion, is willing to acknowledge the 
 charm, the beauty, the whole-souled perfection of the 
 great prophet of Nazareth. He belongs to us; we have 
 not rejected him. The dream of humanity is ours. , The 
 gates of this temple are open to all. Any one may join 
 us; we ask no questions. There is no platform, no 
 movement, so broad as this Jewish movement. But 
 why should we give up what we have had and have for 
 the* mere sake of making a demonstration of our liber- 
 ality? History has not yet run to the end. Tlie full 
 pattern of God is not off the loom. The signs are not 
 for tearing down the walls; the gates are open; we are 
 ready to receive. Shall we step out as long as we are 
 driven back and refused the welcome? If Jesus were 
 to come back to earth to-day they, the Christians would 
 not admit him to their clubs because he is a Jew ; if St. 
 Paul were to come to life he would not be received ; St. 
 Peter would not be allowed to guest at a summer hotel, 
 because, forsooth, he is a Hebrew. And therefore the 
 
 24 
 
synagogue must continue to exist if for no other reason, 
 than to give Jesus a home. 
 
 ]\IanY among us deplore the existence of Judaism. 
 Born of a Jewish mother they gTieve at the fatality of 
 their pedigree. They would be free. They disclaim 
 Jewish religious sympathies. "Xo rabbi for them !" 
 They are kind enough to contribute to his support. But 
 out of ])urG pity ! Tliese race Jews indeed deserve the 
 rebuffs the world has ready for all Jews. Let them be 
 rejected by Ej.iropean courts or American clubs, we have 
 no tear of sympathy to waste on them. Theirs is a just 
 reminder, that though they would not share Judaism's 
 blessings with us, they bear our common lot. For them 
 it is a gnawing shame; for us a glorious pride. For 
 the true Jew never despairs of the ultimate victory of 
 light over darkness. The time will come when better 
 Christians than - now reject, will welcome tJie better 
 Jews, yea, better than they who now would desert the 
 post of danger, though of duty and honor. The walls 
 then will fall. But in the new temple of humanity, a 
 niche will also be consecrated to the lowly Jew of 
 Xazareth, one of that people called to the hero's, the 
 martyr's crown. A Jew was Jesus, as faithful a Jew as 
 ever drew breath, and as such not in opposition to his 
 Judaism, is he the type of a noble-hearted man ! Amen. 
 
 25 
 
w 
 
 PAUL, THE APOSTLE OF HEATHEN JUDA- 
 ISM, OR CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Jesus founded no new religion; lie formulated no 
 new theology; he proclaimed no new creed. Be 
 preached repentance and promised the kingdom of 
 Heaven ; his instructions were ^^regnant with richest 
 elhical thought. The Sermon on the Mount is un- 
 doubtedly the most abundant casket of jewels drawn 
 from the treasure house of high moral inspiration. 
 There is no other necklace so valuable as this; the 
 world has prized it; and as long as suns will rise and 
 moons will wax and wane in the nightly sky, as long 
 as man has not lost that appreciation for purity whicn 
 is the best heirloom given to him, these words of Jesus 
 will come to the soul as the whispered proclamation of 
 the highest. A greater contrast cannot well be con- 
 ceived, than that presented by the official literature of 
 the church three hundred, and two hundred years after 
 Jesus' time, to his own — if his own they were — words 
 and appeals. Prof. Hatch, in his Hibbert Lectures on 
 the Influence of Greek Thought upon the Development 
 of Christianity, calls attention especially to this con- 
 trast. Christianity, says he, begins with ethics: its 
 passion is kindled by immorality; its anger is aroused 
 by unrighteousness; its hopes center in the establish- 
 ment of a kingdom of justice, and the patli, narrow and 
 
 1 
 
steep, to salvation runs along the lieiglits of moral en- 
 deavor and moral uplook. The official church, on the 
 other hand, is anchored to a creed; belief is essential, 
 practice is held under contempt; and as the impulse to 
 creed grows stronger with the circling years, conduct 
 and character are considered to be mere dross — wortii- 
 less chaff to be carried away by the wind; while faith, 
 and faith alone is proclaimed to be the key wherewith 
 to imlock the gateway of the hereafter, open only to 
 those til at accept, and closed to all others — be it through 
 ignorance or be it through perversion — that do not ac- 
 cept the fundamental dogma. 
 
 Who is responsible for this utter change of attitude? 
 G-reek thought and Greek philosophy have dug this new 
 channel, along wLicli the waters welling from the Pools 
 of Siloah ran along with ever more sluggish pace, while 
 they might have flowed, had they been permitted to 
 obey their own original roadbed, in limpid, crystal 
 purity. Their enforced indolence made them an easy 
 prey to the fickle sand sweeping down ujwn them from 
 the banks of tlie new excavation, and threatened to 
 throttle them in a swamp of their own making. The 
 focus, so to speak, in wliich sunlight from Palestine's 
 hills and thought waves from Athen's acropolis met, 
 was the mind of Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. No 
 man has affected the destiny of our family so deeply 
 and so permanently as has this tent-maker of Tarsus. 
 Speak of the mighty heroes on battle field and in battle 
 heat unmoved, who thundered forth, over legions too 
 numerous to be counted, the word of advance; speak 
 of the heroes of peace that spend their days in the 
 search after truth, mounting the weary steps leading to 
 the watch-tower of the night, to communicate with the 
 
 'to' 
 
 2 
 
stars above, or descending into the very bowels of the 
 earth to read the stony inscriptions treasuring the very 
 records of our earth^s creation; speak of those heroes of 
 the mind that impatient of fragmentary knowledge, at 
 personal sacrifice of time and treasure, sally forth into 
 untrodden territories and brave the darts of the fever 
 and the poisoned arrows of the hostile savages in their 
 quest after information ; speak of the giants of industry 
 "*"hat link together distant zones by ligatures of iron and 
 steel;, or surgeons that cut the umbilical cord binding 
 daughter island to mother continent. None of these 
 has so materially, so deeply, so lastingly stamped his 
 own thought upon the human race as has, and does to the 
 present day, the poor, misshapen Jew, Eoman citizen 
 though he was, whose cradle stood at Tarsus and whose 
 school years were spent at the feet of Jerusalem's 
 patriarchs. Should ever, by some hap or other, the 
 greatest lights be extinguished in the galaxy spanning 
 the centuries, longer than any other star would scintil- 
 late above in power his name. Yea, none has so deeply, 
 I repeat, affected the destiny of the human family as 
 has Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles. On his account 
 wars were waged; by his doctrine humanity was cleft 
 into hostile camps ; his words have been the burden of 
 many a human soul and again have been the stay of as 
 many other human hearts. He has cited the demons 
 of terror to gather around the bed where agonized poor 
 human mortal clay in terror and anxiety of what would 
 come after the final struggle of life ; and he has winged 
 ■uith confidence of peaceful hope and assurance other 
 souls impatient to shuffle off this mortal coil and lo 
 enter the truer kingdom of light, of love and of life. 
 ^^^latever our own religious opinions may be, this fact 
 4 3 
 
alone slioiild aspiire for liis words and his doctrines a 
 careful and a close attention. 
 
 We cannot nnderstand Paul without first compre- 
 hending the peculiar change wrought by the contact of 
 Jewish thought with Greek doctrines before his coming, 
 which resulted in a certain phase of Judaism. Paul 
 would be an impossibility, original as he is, w'ithout 
 Philo before him, without Alexandrian Judaism as the 
 mother well for him to drink from. Even the most or- 
 iginal minds are linked to their antecedents; none — 
 unless it be in modern time, where originality is as 
 cheap as the mud in our city streets — none is self-made 
 in the work shop where thought spins its eternal 
 threads. \V\mi tlie best, what the brightest ofl our kind 
 may hope to accomplish is to w^eave a new design into 
 the pattern, but the threads which we employ and which 
 we cast backward and forward with the flying shuttle 
 are taken from the bobbin on which are wound the re- 
 flections of the men who lived before us. There is 
 historical continuity and, therefore, historical con- 
 nectedness in the evolution of thought. We stand on 
 our past, and so did Paul rise to his giant stature on 
 the shoulders of tliose tliat preceded him. When Jew 
 came first in contact with Greek, a new opportunity 
 opened for him, 'No greater distance can possibly be 
 ^ imagined between two poles of thought tlian is that 
 ■ ' which gapes between Greek and Jewish mind. The 
 Greek is typically Aryan, as such it inclines to analysis, 
 the Jewish to synthesis ; the Greek scales to truth by the 
 round of details; the Jew soars to truth by the energy 
 of sentiment! and feeling; the Jew is int^ensely personal, 
 the (Jreek is as intensely abstract; the Jew reads world 
 and nature in terms of an equation of personality in 
 
 4 
 
which the two factors are rigidly kept apart; the or- 
 iginal Semitic God is indeed living alone be- 
 yond the world ; he governs the world, but he is not im- 
 manent in it. Th(3 original Semitic God idea has been 
 preserved in the Koran, or perhaps I had better say 
 carried rlierein to its furthest consistency. God and 
 man are' separated, and the cleavage between them is as 
 impassable as is a gulch cut by the water courses in a 
 rugged mountain. Even later Mohammedan theolog}" 
 and philosophy were unable to span that chasm with a 
 bridge steady and secure. This Semitic God idea is 
 modified, of course, in the theology of the prophets; but 
 taking it as a whole it remains unshakably true, that 
 Mohammed, and not Spinoza, is strikingly Semitic. 
 
 Universe and God are two divided poles for the 
 Semite, while the Greek rather views them as one, dif- 
 ferentiated imder two aspects. The difficulty for Jew 
 and Greek to understand each other was not the result 
 of difference of language alone. The Greek could not 
 conceive of an extra-mundane God; the gods of the 
 Greeks lived in the world; they did not merely send 
 forth the storms their messengers and command the 
 lightning to run on their swift errands; they did not 
 merely bid the waters stand still, or the sea to rise in 
 wrath — the gods were the water, the gods w^ere the 
 winds. God was immanent, not transcendental. 
 
 But Jew and Greek a few centuries before Paul had 
 come into closer communion. Alexander the Great, iii 
 his ambition to found a world empire, had mixed the 
 ingredients of a new humanity with the pestle of war. 
 Stamping and grinding humanity in the mortar he 
 forced into closest contact Greek and Jew. In conse- 
 quence of this, arose the necessity for the Jewish 
 
 5 
 
til inkers in Alexandria to present their to the Greek 
 utterly inconceivable system, in a form that might 
 bring it nearer to the understanding of the Greek mind. 
 Certain concepts found eA^en in certain books of their 
 old Hebrew Bible^, stood them in good stead for this 
 purpose. The so-called wisdom literature, in itself free 
 from national bias and therefore more readily appealing 
 to the sympathies of the Hellenized Jews of Egypt, 
 proved the suggestive source of mediating thoughts; for 
 in these books wisdom appears almost in the light of an 
 independent essence under God through which the 
 world is guided. On the other hand, as they became 
 more familiar with Greek thought, they found some- 
 thing analogous to this in Plato's system. Greek 
 philosophy had evolved the poetic notion, that God in 
 creating the world had conceived first in his own mind 
 the perfect universe; actual creation was merely cloth- 
 ing with visible reality the idea which had taken life 
 and shape in the mind of the Creator. Platonism, or 
 to be more accurate, Neo-Platonism reigned supreme 
 in the academies of Alexandria. The view that God 
 had associated with him a second energy, the ideas 
 through which he acted upon the world, lay ready to 
 hand. The abstract God in his sublime majesty was 
 out of nexus with the universe; he had deputized the 
 ideas to act in his behalf. The Jewish mind and tlio 
 Greek had thus apparently come to the same conclusion. 
 The Jewish current had reflected divine wisdom as the 
 potency of creation; the Greek had emphasized a similar 
 view, that God's ideas are the principles by which the 
 world is called into being. Here was now promise of 
 reconciliation; the two lines of thought had this point 
 in common. Here they " intersected. Idea and 
 
 6 
 
"Chol-limah'' are the logos, divine reason, the mediator 
 which the Greek mind needed to link world to God and 
 man to his supreme creator. It is a Jewish thinker, 
 Philo, contemporaneous with Jesus^ who systematizes 
 this peculiar view of the universe. God creates the 
 world through logos; God acts on the world through. 
 logos. Tn Philo, it is not clear whether logos be merely 
 a hypostasis, projection of God himself, or it be a 
 second personality of God himself. At all events, 
 Philonism had thoroughly prepared the soil for the 
 planting of the seed from which Paulinian theology 
 could grow. From Philo it was but one step to Paul's 
 dogma. The fourth gospel, whatever the age of its 
 composition^ before or after the epistles, is the echo of 
 Hellenistic Alexandrian speculations. It identifies 
 Christ with the logos. It is, now, not a wild guess, that 
 in the island of Tarsus, his birthplace, Paul, who ma:^t 
 have been a bright young man, had come under the in- 
 fluence of the conception that a spiritual mediatorship 
 existed between God and the world. When at an early 
 age he left Tarsus to go to Jerusalem, before probably 
 the end had come to Jesus — though he personally never 
 came into concourse and contact with the prophet of 
 N'azareth, the schools which he attended, the academy 
 in which he was enrolled a pupil of Gamaliel, a grand- 
 son of the famous Hillel, must not have been free from 
 this teaching, while, on the other hand, the Galilean 
 hills must have sounded the wonder deeds of Jesus, re- 
 vered as none other by a certain class of people. After 
 the death of Jesus, it seems that Paul went a second 
 time from Tarsus to Jerusalem, where he met with 
 some of the disciples who had come in contact with 
 Jesus. It is more than likely that he heard from their 
 
 7 ' 
 
lips the story of his life adorned even so early Avitli 
 legend grown on tlie rich soil of love and theologic};! 
 conceptions. This story could not but liave made a 
 deep impression on him; thougli — a phenomenon so 
 often noticed in the history of great men — the first im- 
 pression was that of resistance to what he later burned 
 to proclaim from the very housetops. 
 
 Paul was of noble birth. Xobility in those days was 
 not of the blood exactly; it was certainly not of wealth. 
 \Mio in those days constituted the aristocracy among 
 the Jews ; those whom to meet was deemed a rare 
 privilege? Was it the millionaire? Ah ! no ; the touch 
 of his hand was not tlie boon coveted. Was it the high 
 priest, in ignorance but in pomp and state performing 
 the measured functions of his office? No; learning 
 wove the crown of glory in those days-; and Paul was 
 descended from a family of the tribe of Benjamin, in 
 whom learnino^ liad been an ambition transmitted from 
 father to son. In Jerusalem he was brought into closest 
 sympathy with the Pharisees. Gamaliel at the head of 
 the Academy was his own personal instructor. In such 
 surroundings he could not but become imbued with the 
 spirit of Judaism as polarized in the Pharisaic axis. 
 He grew up a strict observer of the law and well versed 
 in the dialectics which anchored tlie legal enactments 
 •upon the rock bed of the Pentatcuchal texts. The first 
 impulse, then, when he heard from lips of Nazarenes 
 the story of the life and the death of Jesus, tlicir 
 prophet and IMessiah^ was one of resistance and horror. 
 We know, from the story of his life, that among the 
 persecutors of the 5'oung, rising Christian communities, 
 none was ]:)erhaps so zealous and displayed such bitter 
 fanaticism as Saul of Tarsus. TTe assisted at the lapi- 
 
 8 
 
dation of Steplieri, the brother of Jesus; he was ever 
 thereafter fired Avith passion to crush out tlie growing 
 heresy; l^e even went so far, weaponed with a letter of 
 introduction from higli authorities, as to repair to 
 Damascus in order to denounce the refugees of tlie 
 Christian brotherhood, fled to that city for safety. On 
 the way to Damascus, an event took place which turned 
 out to be for him of sublime and supreme moment, — 
 marking a crisis in his whole life and giving ^n oppo- 
 site turn to his ambitious activity. It is certain that 
 he beheld Jesus; he himself says so. He heard the 
 master's voice; he was met by him on the road to 
 Damascus. Glorious light seemed to flood the horizon, 
 and in that light he read the new promise and the ne^r 
 revelation. Bungling rationalism, the stock in trade 
 of men like Ingersoll and others of his ilk, legitimate 
 one hundred years ago, but to-day entirely out of 
 rh^mie with the thought of modern science on 
 these questions, shrugging its shoulders with affec- 
 tation of superior wisdom, would claim that 
 either St. Paul invented the story in order 
 to shield his change of heart or, if he saw anything, he 
 merely was dazzled by the zigzagging of lightning from 
 the sky above. Orthodoxy, again, has claimed and docs 
 claim, that the Apostle actually did behold in the flesh 
 him who was crucified. How do tue account for the 
 phenomena? ^lodern psychology has cast the light of 
 its searching torch into the darkest nooks and corners of 
 the human soul. We have recognized to-da}^ the possi- 
 bility of autohypnotism, '^self -suggestion" of certain 
 phenomena. Eivet j^our attention on one subject, be 
 bound up in it so that, as it were, in it you lose your own 
 identity; it will haimt you in your dreams and it will 
 
 9 
 
persist at your elbow in your waking hours. Have you 
 'not had similar experiences? Have A'ou not heard voices 
 from the land beyond; have 3^ou not occasionally in the 
 busy streets in Chicago turned to see whether face was 
 behind you or form had followed you? And to a 
 greater extent than this, though in the same psycho- 
 logical process involved, come such phenomena to great, 
 minds stirred up to their depths. A man organized as 
 Saul of Tarsus was, could he escape pondering upon the 
 peculiarities presented to him by the few Christian-} 
 wlio then liad with the tendrils of a loving soul embraced 
 the story and the life of Jesus of Xazareth as a promise 
 of the near dawn of kingdom come? 
 
 He could not ; he had heard the story ; he was a Jew 
 of the Jews, strict in the performance of his duties aris- 
 ing under the law. He must have — for such theo- 
 logical minds are not born in an hour — he must often 
 before have asked himself the question : What is the 
 root of this constant dissatisfaction, which is the heir- 
 loom of every thinking mind and every feeling heart? 
 Why is it that we crave for satisfaction and it as per- 
 sistently eludes us? Why is it that the law does not 
 satisfy me ; why is it that I, the strict adherent of legal 
 Judaism, am in constant danger of violating the law? 
 Some of you who have been brought up under Jewish 
 orthodox influence know what is implied in being a 
 loyal Jew of the old school: not a motion of the hand 
 but is tied to an article of the code ; not a twitching of 
 the finger but v/ill l)rush against some other paragraph 
 of the law. The conclusion is not far off — though not 
 altogether true — that one is not free, but bound under 
 the law, a slave under law. That mechanical legalism 
 cannot still the inborn yearning, is an unavoidable ex- 
 
 10 
 
perience. It adds a new thorn to the flesh. This ex- 
 perience must have been PaiiPs. He must have fretted 
 and chafed under the "Yoke of tlie Law," for 
 he conmitted the error of overlooking the spirituality 
 of the "Law.'^ He confounded Thorah with nomob- 
 and reduced Judaism to a mere chain of legal enact- 
 ments. And now he came in contact with a community 
 of men, Jews, too — for the early Christians were Jews — 
 observing the law as scrupulously as he did, but who ap- 
 parently had found the peace he craved, their eyes 
 glistened with a hope new to him; they braved death 
 to witness to their new confidence; they expatriated 
 themselves even and complained not. He had been a 
 spectator at the execution of Stephen and must have 
 been touched by his heroism. How often has death on 
 the gallows been the portal for the propagation of an 
 idea? For you cannot retard the march of ideas by 
 hanging a few wretches who are its exponents. They 
 may kill till doomsday in Paris the demented men that 
 throw the bombs, but the idea which even through their 
 barbarous perversion would have a hearing, will knock 
 at the gate until it has performed its errand. The very 
 stone cast of Jesus's brother became the corner-stone 
 of the church, and Paul, assisting at the sacrifice, could 
 not defend himself against the impression left by the 
 fate of him who was executed. Plead for capital pun- 
 ishment, as has been done in this city of late by men 
 even who claim to have the monopoly of all ethical 
 ideas, if you must; capital punishment is absolutely 
 impotent, and it is and remains a relic of barbarism. 
 Not one that is executed but becomes in a certain sense 
 a hero. Tlie worst criminal "dying game" is not a 
 deterrent but an incentive to his comrades in 
 
 11 
 
crime! Not alone once, a thousand times has 
 history verified this judgment; the death of 
 Stephen is one of the many i:)roofs of this his- 
 torical proclamation. On the way to Damascus he must 
 have yielded more and more at every step to his pry- 
 occui)ation, pondering and pondering the mystery of his 
 own soul and the fortitude of the persecuted until his 
 nerves were strung to tlicir last tension. Thought and 
 nerve are inseparable companions. Cool, calm men that 
 cannot be disturbed, but rarely explore the depths of 
 passionate convictions. Nervous temperaments are the 
 prerequisites of such as would unhinge the gates, be- 
 hind which are held the chariots of onward moving 
 mankind. Creative genius cannot light its tapers m 
 the rainbow colors of an iceberg, tipped with sun-light. 
 Its lamp blazes forth where Vulcan heats the hearth and 
 blows the bellows. Every prophet is of the volcanic 
 guild. And Paul had within his bones the "consuming 
 fire.^' 
 
 With his thoughts concentrated on this one ruling 
 idea and perplexity, the crisis came to him as it did to 
 the prophets of old. Tliere stood before him — as 
 though in flesh and bone— the vision. His ears tingled 
 with voices. Did they have their cradle within him? 
 Wiiat that to him ? He saw, he heard— and he suc- 
 cumbed. The vexation he had puzzled over so long had 
 at last overpowered him. And he came to Damascus a 
 changed man; Saul the persecutor was changed into 
 Paul the Apostle. 
 
 His further personal history does not interest us in 
 this connection. We are in quest not so much of a de- 
 tailed itinerary' of his checkered life, as we are of a suc- 
 cinct exposition of his fundamental ideas. Tlie Jesus 
 
 12 
 
that he had seen on his way to Damascus now took in 
 his system the place of the ''logos' of Philo. He be- 
 came the "mediator" between God and man. He was' 
 one with God. Paul could all the more readily so con- 
 ceive of /o^os-Jesus, as in the rabbinical theology the 
 Thorah was represented as pre-existent in God, God's 
 veritable only born son; and to it was assigned, though 
 rather poetically than dogmatically, the mediating char- 
 acter. But whence the need of a mediator? Prom the 
 first, Paul in his epistles is busy discussing the relation 
 of man to God. Are God and man at peace, or are they 
 divided? Psychology seems to point to the second mem- 
 ber of the alternative. Man is hounded by dissatisfac- 
 tion, and still has the craving for perfection, thoii 
 he cannot attain unto it. Led by this common experi- 
 ence, Paul is led into a fundamental error — upon which 
 rests his whole S3^stem. He confounds the inward 
 gnawing sense of dissatisfaction and imperfection with 
 sin, and he makes of sin, not the violation of one lawt 
 or another, but a state. Sin is a state! Originally 
 perfection was man's dower. But he lost it. Sin is 
 the curse brought upon the race by its own ancestors. 
 It is of Adam; and through Adam has come upon all 
 descended from Adam. Originally man was free from 
 this dissatisfaction; originally man was made perfect; 
 but Adam sinned, and his sin fixed its own resulting 
 condition upon all of his children. The idea of trans- 
 missal of guilt is not Jewish. The Semite seems, how- 
 ever, to have inclined to the view that character 
 depends upon ancestry. (See Wellhausen. Skizzen 
 III. p. 194.) Jewish law recognizes to a certain 
 extent the heredity of evil, but limits the operation 
 to four generations. Yahweh, Yahwch, All-merciful 
 
 13 
 
and gracious, preserving his love unto thousands of 
 generations, but visiting the sins of the fathers upon the 
 sons, tlie sous of the sons again to the fourth generation. 
 Further tlian tliis, according to the Jewish notion, the 
 baneful effect of sin does not extend. I will not at- 
 tempt to prove the correctness of this limitation; per- 
 haps natural science may take exception to this, and 
 have cogent reasons to insist that a still more remote 
 ancestor than the great grandfather is responsible for 
 our shortcomings. I merely would recall the fact thai. 
 Jewish thought, when emphasizing the antithesis be- 
 tween the everlasting blessing of good, and the limited 
 visitation of evil, fixes the fourth generation as the self- 
 extinction of sin. Moreover, Ezekiel announces most 
 clearly that son shall not die for the guilt of the father. 
 Among the Greeks this idea was greatl}^ spread. The 
 old Greek tragedies are written in the same fundamental 
 keys in which Paul's proclamation runs. The Greek 
 dramatists speculate on and operate with black Ate, the 
 black fate of sin that roots in the family and is trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation, until expiation or 
 atonement is made. 
 
 In Paul the notion of transmissal of guilt, arrested 
 merely by expiation, is Greek, not Jewish, however 
 much he may strain in true Rabbinical fashion Bibilic?il 
 texts to prove his point. That a substitute may 
 neutralize the consequences of some other's deeds is al-^o 
 a tliought which the Jewish mind has not evolved. It 
 rises from the back-ground of ancient tri1)al organiza- 
 tiou : and the involved institution of the blood avenger. 
 Blood for blood, in which the life of one of the 
 clan does answer for the life of the other. The Gael 
 Haddam misapplied, is root to Paul's idea of vi- 
 
 14 
 
carious atonement. The Greeks, on the other hand 
 were not disinclined to such a view. For instance in 
 Prometheus Bound b}^ Aeschylus, Hermes addresses 
 stubborn and suffering- Prometheus thus: ''^Of such 
 agony hope not the end, before a substitute for thy tor- 
 ture, a god, appears; then have thee ready for thee to 
 descend to sunless Hades." We have some idea of a 
 god offering himself a vicarious atonement for the sin 
 of Prometheus; and before such expiation, he cannot - 
 be free I. Of Greek origin thus appears this element ol 
 Paul's soteriology. Sin is death. Redemption there- 
 fore includes the victory over death. He who came to 
 save the world, rises from the dead. The notion of the 
 resurrection was familiar to the Jews. This is not the 
 place to liscuss the mooted question when and whenci- 
 this doctrine formed a foothold in Jewish thought. In 
 the Pharisaic hope, it was a cardinal element. How- 
 ever, Paul gives it a new direction. In the twist which 
 he gave the familiar notion, no Jew^ had entertained it. 
 A national hope was dwarfed into a single event, in 
 turn forced to bolster a dogmatic construction. As in 
 this case, so in many more Paul borrows his terms and 
 ideas even from current Jewish phraseology; but in 
 each instance he applies his material in a way anti- 
 Jewish. In the Jewish Haggada, e. g., the indications 
 are not few that certain conceptions had been current 
 among the Jews. But this is the difference : In Paul's 
 system they are crystalized into a dogma, in the Jewish 
 Haggada they are poetic solutions. 
 
 The deterioration consequent upon the '^fall'^ are 
 dwelt on in the Haggada of the rabbis, but their state- 
 ments are translucent legends, not opaque and obscure 
 doomaa?. Before Adam sinned he w^as so tall that hi? 
 
 15 
 
of the world 1 3 the other ; when he sinned, God laid his 
 hand ujion hiin and reduced him to the common mortal 
 size. The llaggada operates also with the equation, sin 
 and death and satan and serpent. But it cannot be re- 
 peated too olten, these extravagances are indulged in 
 for pur])oses of homiletic applications of Biblical texts. 
 As dogmas these legends are anti- Jewish. Judaism, 
 whatever its qualification, rejects the dogma of original 
 sin, and tlie consequent need of Justification by faith in 
 the vicarious atonement of the second Adam, came to 
 wash away with his blood the sin of the first. The dis- 
 tinction betA\een the grace of God and his justice, so 
 fundamental in Paul's dogmatic exposition, is not a free 
 inveution of his. The "mercy-seat'' and the "throne 
 of justice" of God are standing figures of speech in Eab- 
 binical sermons. But as Judaism, whatever may De 
 said to the contrary, did never teach a God of wrath, 
 wIjo must be propitiated by blood — See Micah's words 
 in the sixth chapter of his prophecy — the whole theory 
 of Paul is a departure from, not an exposition of Juda- 
 ism. As Philo views everything in the 0. T. as a sym- 
 bol and allegory, so Paul regards it as a type. Adam 
 is type. The sacrificial ritual is typical of the one final 
 supreme sacrifice. His antithesis between law_ and love 
 falls into the same category. Though the 0. T. itself 
 protests that ''Love God" demands not sacrifice, Juda- 
 ism is regarded as mere legalism. What is, according 
 to Paul, the province of this old Jewish law, and why 
 was the world left to its cruel fate so long? Why were 
 men by God abandoned so long to go to perdition? Paul 
 was a thinker. He felt the difficulty of the question. 
 In the epistle to the Romans he gives the answer. God 
 
 16 
 
delayed redemption so long that the world under sin 
 might recognize that life outside of God was the high- 
 road to perdition. Sin is the very glory of God. Sin 
 had to run its destiny, so that in the conviction of the 
 gentile world should come at last the day when, despair 
 seizing them, they found their culture broken reeds on 
 which to support themselves. The case of the Jews 
 was somewhat different. The law, God-given would in- 
 deed make perfect were it possible for man to fulfill the 
 law, but the law cannot be fulfilled. From his premises, 
 Paul is right in saying that the law, instead of decreas- 
 ing sin, increases it. There is none that is perfect, that 
 is the experience of the law. The law in thus, instead 
 of diminishing the sense of sin, enhancing it, was a 
 pedagogue unto Christ. The Law must yield to faith. 
 Faith in Jesus, who conquered through his resurrection 
 death, and who was born into this world without sin, 
 gives us back the heirloom taken from us by Adam's 
 disobedience. Those that accept shall enter into new 
 life ; they are regenerated, born anew as it were, a new 
 nature put into them. 
 
 Tlie young church was soon ablaze with the contro- 
 versy about the furtlier obligatory character of the law. 
 Was the new message for the world, or was it merely for 
 the Jew? Paul took the bold step: he planted himself 
 on the basis, tliat as the law was merely a pedagogue 
 imto Christ, with the coming of Christ the law was for 
 the Christian abrogated. St. Peter, the Jewish apostle, 
 and the Jew- Christians, claimed that the law was not set 
 aside; that in order to join the new community, circum- 
 cision was essential. Had Paul not taken the stand he 
 did, Christianity would not have spread. Judaism be- 
 fore Paul's time had begun to extend its influence, but 
 
 17 
 
the barriers of the law kept out a waiting world. In 
 tlie clays of Paul men were yearning for a new 
 iiglit, they were athirst and cried out, as the children 
 of Israel in the desert cried out to Moses : Give 
 us water, that we may drink. But Peter, as the Jews 
 before him, insisted the barriers shall stand; none shall 
 be admitted except he have the seal of the covenant in 
 his flesh. Paul with one bold sweep of the pen opened 
 the gates for the conquest and conversion of the world. 
 Had the Jews of that time been able to read the in- 
 scription on the wall, had they looked at the hand on 
 the dial, they might have reclaimed the world with the 
 ethics, their own ethics, lived and taug^lit by Jesus of 
 Nazareth; they might have gone forth and brought to 
 tlie thirsty the water, to the hungry the bread of life. 
 But they would not, as to-day they will not. The times 
 were ripe; Judaism neglected the opportunity. Paul 
 embraced it. He preached in words comprehensible to 
 the pagan world the doctrine which he had discovered 
 in liis own God-touched heart. Yea; there is much at 
 which we take exception in his system. We do not grant 
 that Judaism is law; the prophetic system is not la.v, 
 legalism is a compromise. The Judaism of the proph- 
 ets is not law. This no one has recognized so deeply as 
 one whose whole life work was to show this error in 
 Paul's conception of Judaism.' Consult Dr. Samuel 
 Hirsch's exposition of our religion if you would learn 
 that, while antagonistic to Paulinian dogmatism and 
 mysticism, it is not nomism. 
 
 Judaism itself has broken witli legalism ; but it does 
 not commit with Paul the mistake to underrate ethical 
 action. Faith, certainly men must have; without faith 
 the world must come to an end. Ye who love your 
 
 18 
 
children and work for humanity, mind, Faith is the 
 steam that turns the wheels of humanity. But this 
 faith is not the mystic something which, Paul holds, 
 leads to salvation. Is character nothing? Paul's exag- 
 geration of faith is a reaction upon the legalism of tlie 
 synagogue. AVhy is it that so many brought up among 
 our orthodox will have nothing of Judaism after they 
 escape from their tutors? ^Yhy is it that ethical culture 
 finds nowhere so eager recruits as from among the ranks 
 of the orthodox Jews? 
 
 Mendelssohn's fate illustrates the reason. His own 
 children went forth from Judaism and separated from 
 it. The Merrdeissohns are no longer Jews, they are 
 officially Christians; it was the legalism of Mendels- 
 sohn that superinduced their apostasy. Paul from be- 
 ing a Pharisee ^Hassid had to go to the other extreme. 
 He accentuated faith and despised work. But the 
 world is once more coming around to the other pole. 
 Paulinian Christianity is gradually developing into the 
 Christianity of Jesus. Christianity of this latter order 
 and our religion are twin brothers. Character is the 
 sacramental word of our religion. This Paul did not 
 understand ; this Jesus understood ; this we understaml. 
 Paul's great deed was to carry Jewish thought, even in 
 his form, into the Avorld. He left behind the narrow 
 confines of Judaism to win the globe. His fate and the 
 experience of his movements is full of instruction. Did 
 the freedom which Paul craved ever come ? It did not. 
 The slavery of the law was exchanged for the shackles 
 of creed and dogma; the free thought and the free life 
 which he coveted did not ensue. And so it will be in 
 these latter days. Separate from Judaism ! Freedom 
 will soon yield to a new slavery. Liberalism is safest 
 
 19 
 
when protected by the historical associations with Juda- 
 ism. As yet the Christian church is too potent for us 
 to loosen what historical connection we have. It is a 
 law that smaller bodies are attracted by the larger. 
 Around the sun spin a thousand asteroids ; they are 
 largely of the sun ; but the sun draws them back and 
 feeds upon his own offspring. And so it is with unhis- 
 torical liberal movements; instead of leading to larger 
 liberty, they event in greater slavery. Best protected 
 is liberal thought, the religion of character, in its his- 
 torical frame ; we can Avork from this fulcnmi to lift the 
 world. This is our conviction. There is no necessity 
 to leave Judaism to win the world. Open your gates, 
 but let it be your gates, for the righteous to enter there- 
 into. 
 
 That much we may learn from the history of Paul's 
 church. Tlie apostle was a man of little prepossessing 
 appearance : a man racked by disease ; a man whose eyes 
 were weak; a man who had to win his livelihood in the 
 sweat of his brow ; a man of whom no one would have 
 dreamt that under the missha])en body burned a fire- 
 consumed soul. In such ungainly frame God's spirit 
 loves to dwell occasionally. This tent-maker, blear-eyed, 
 disease-racked, lifted the Roman world out of its hinges. 
 The world has learned to distil the waters of its faith, to 
 filter tliem once more. And what is the purified stream? 
 As the religion of the dogmatist is separated, there will 
 be found the religion of Jesus^ which is our religion: 
 Judaism universal. 
 
THE INALIENABLE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 No phrase has carried during the last hundred years 
 or more, so great an emphasis as has "The rights of 
 man.'^ Without fear of laying one's self open to the 
 charge of exaggeration, one may say that the political 
 and the social thought of this century has taken its 
 keynote from this expression. It has been enlarged 
 into many a document; it has formed the theme of 
 many a stirring appeal. It has been preached from 
 the housetops; it has been repeated in the school- 
 rooms ; it has been thundered forth from the hustings ; 
 it has served as the weapon of the demagogue and the 
 palladium of the true patriot. In times of great popu- 
 lar uneasiness it has been thrown as oil on troubled 
 waters. In days of great popular indignation it has 
 often fanned the flame of popular fury. It has gained 
 a hearin.of in counting-houses. It has echoed in the 
 closet of the student. It floats out upon the breeze 
 from the dome of the nation's capitol. It is the diapa- 
 son of almost every state paper. It is the Leitmotif, so 
 to speak, of many a decision rendered by the highest 
 tribunals of this land. It is the convenient plea for 
 lawyers whose clients would escape their obligations. 
 
 1 
 
"Tlie rights of mau'^ — for one hundred 3'Gars human- 
 ity has feasted on this combination of high-toned word=. 
 The fruit of the creed it crystalizes is apparent in our 
 day. The signs are multii)lying tluit mankind is at hisfc 
 awakening to the suspicion that the so-phrased creed is, 
 unless su])plemented by an essential qualification, alto- 
 gether insufficient to pillar a humanity true to its own 
 genius, and held together by the more potent clasps of 
 love, devotion and free service. 
 
 The few chosen ones before w^hom life has spread a 
 rich banquet — whom the waves of fortune have always 
 carried on their crest, — who have been fairly successful 
 and found this world as now constituted, a most com- 
 fortable place to live in — ]>erhaps do not understand 
 even when they know of its existence and insistence 
 the depth of unrest and the profundity of despair that 
 now is upon millions of our fellow-men to whom life is 
 largely a disappointment, and to whom society and the 
 social order offer only chary opportunities to live 
 worthy and noble lives. 'No truth is bodied forth by 
 the comfortable and common assurance repeated in 
 season and out of season to-da}^ that only those 
 whose hearts rankle with the poison of jealousy 
 and envy, the thriftless and the shiftless, the 
 unworthy and the abnormal, are crying out for 
 a re-constitution of the social order. This gen- 
 eralization may lull to thoughtless sleep him whom the 
 Germans would label a Philistine, i. e. a man whose 
 vision is hemmed in by the narrowest valley of self- 
 interest; a man whose ears are dull to every sound save 
 the clink of the ducats which he reaps, rightfully or 
 wrongfully, in the harvest time of commercial enter- 
 prise. 
 
 The best of men, the purest of minds, the deepest of 
 
 2 
 
thinkers^ standing on the high watch peak of the age, 
 have foreseen the portents of the day described by our 
 prophet — the day of darkness, the day of distress, the 
 day of disaster, and they would now raise the ensign 
 on the hill and lift np their voice in a warning outcry, 
 trumpeting forth to a generation verging on the deaf- 
 ness and blindness of selfishness, a solemn Beware ! 
 iSTothing is more dangerous than such assurance cher- 
 ished by the pets of success that the world is right, and 
 societv is rio^hteously constituted. 
 
 Can it be denied, that the mere doctrine of the rights 
 of man has played into the hands of the selfish? While 
 it has been the lever to lift up a few, it has also, con- 
 trary to the hope and confidence of its first coiners, 
 proven a weight to drag down the millions. 
 
 The bald theory of rights has prospered the capital- 
 ists and none other. It has sponsored a new kind of 
 selfishness of which the former ages knew nothing. I 
 am not talking at random. Those among you^I trust 
 there are many — who have devoted time and thought to 
 the study of the literature bearing on politico-economic 
 and sociolooical problems, well know that my statement 
 can easily be verified, and that^ too, by the testimony of 
 facts as solid as the granite pillars of Hercules which 
 stand guard o'er the narrow passage way through which 
 the Mediterranean runs to wed the boisterous Atlantic. 
 Facts as sound as granite prove the contention that 
 under the bald doctrine of the rights of man, capital 
 hcTs prospered, at the expense of the humanities. ]t. 
 was this one-sided doctrine which has produced what is 
 called capitalism. 
 
 I should not, were this not a Jewish temple, pause to 
 reiterate a pledge which often I have worded here and 
 elsewhere, that I am not of the opinion that private 
 7 3 
 
property is ethically and fundamentally wrong. 
 Against the capitalist I have nothing to urge; but 
 against capitalism, against a capitalistic order of so- 
 ciety, my religion, the religion of Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
 the religion of the best among all men — has everything 
 to urge. 
 
 Upon the doctrine of the rights of man is founded 
 that system of social organization the essential element 
 of which is individualism. The men of the eighteentJi 
 century who gave us this doctrine had no insight into 
 the true character of humanity. They labored under 
 a grievous error. They raised each individual man as 
 individual to the dignity of an exponential function of 
 humanity, and operated with this, their pet formula, as 
 though the thousand and one, the millions and billions 
 of human beings tenanting simultaneously the globe, 
 were merely held together by interest, neglecting alto- 
 gether the factor of the organical union between man 
 and man, insisting that essentially, an individual man 
 represented the fullest contents of human growth. 
 
 Or, to state their proposition in other words, they 
 taught that individuals make society. This is, the fatal 
 mistake of their philosophy, this the reason for the ulti- 
 mate failure of their ethics. The individual, being the 
 free architect of society, gives to or withholds from so- 
 ciety his own creature, as much or as little as he 
 pleases. His freedom is his own and is final. No other 
 person may interfere with him and no consideration 
 can influence him save self-interest. He fixes the 
 measure of the contribution due by him,' the individual, 
 to society. In accordance with this view, Adam Smith 
 and his followers, the English school of political 
 economists, the English school of jurists, have always 
 insisted that the scope of i^o^'-^ action was limited while 
 
 4 
 
the individual virtually had no barriers. Under the 
 stipulations of a social contract, individuals have con- 
 ceded* certain privileges to society. These are fixed and 
 limited.- Beyond them any social action is an unjust 
 infringement upon the rights of the individual. Our 
 own political system is built on these foundations. The 
 limitations are drawn by the constitution and it is prac- 
 tically unalterable. The adjustment of social burdens 
 as found in the instrument must stand inflexibly. 
 
 Two cases recently decided are in point. In both 
 this view was the leading thought of our highest courts 
 — in this state as well as in the supreme court of our 
 nation. 
 
 In this state, the factory inspection act, limiting the 
 hours of work for women, was declared unconstitu- 
 tional. From the very first day of the enactment of that 
 law. the opinion prevailed that our supreme court would 
 decide this legislative enactment, upon proper proceed- 
 ings, to be in violation of the fundamental constitu- 
 tional limitations as laid down in the organic law of 
 the land and the state. Both our state and national 
 constitution rest upon the doctrine that certain rights 
 are inalienably ^'the rights of man." Freedom of con- 
 tract is the fundamental pillar of humanity as under- 
 stood by the individualistic philosophy which took shape 
 in government as devised by the constitution. The fac- 
 tory act presumed that for higher purposes of humanity, 
 for higher ends, society through its instrument and 
 as-ent, the state, has the right to regulate and limit 
 this very freedom of contract. 
 
 In whose interest were the proceedings to declare the 
 act unconstitutional instituted? According to the 
 arguments advanced in the pleadings, it would seem n;- 
 though the legislature had done a grievous injustice to 
 
 5 
 
these women by curtailing their right to cove- 
 nant as they chose. If 1 had been in the case 
 as a professional legal adviser, I suppose 1 
 should have adopted the same line of 'objec- 
 tions as was laid down by the master attorneys who 
 managed to riddle the statute. I. too, should liave 
 asked the supreme court to consider that these women 
 should not be held in tutelage ; that they ought not to 
 be deprived of their privilege to order their life as they 
 might elect. I should have sung the good old song 
 about the evils of parentalism and the rights of man. 
 I should have asked the court to remember that the 
 women wdio were to be interfered wath were of age. 
 They certainly ought not to be treated like children who 
 need a guardian. If they wish to work ten hours, 
 whose concern is it but theirs? But let us be honest. 
 Was this suit brought for the purpose of protecting the 
 women in the enjoyment of an inalienable right? T 
 know not who had charge of the case. I know not who 
 was in the manufacturers' society that brought the suit. 
 But it was certainly not instituted to safeguard the in- 
 dependence of the women. This was the pretense and 
 the pretext. It was induced l)y the necessities of busi- 
 ness. We could not, if the law was allowed to stand, 
 compete with the New York manufacturers. We were 
 at a great disadvantage in competition. The plea for 
 freedom played, in this case, into the hands of what I 
 call capitalism. 
 
 As in this, so in a thousand similar cases throughout 
 the century elapsed, the doctrine of the rights of man 
 has generally been the helper, not of the masses, but of 
 the classes ; not of the people, but of the plutocrats, or 
 rather the plutocratic order of society. 
 
 The other case is still more recent. The constitution 
 
 6 
 
has limited the taxing powers of congress. It stipu- 
 lates certain exemptions. Those exemptions must stand, 
 forjhe constitution is an instrument specifying, not the 
 duties but the formal reservations of rights that the 
 individuals while conceding certain functions to society 
 and its agents, government, have excepted from the 
 effect of this concession. 
 
 Congress placed a tax upon incomes. This tax, es- 
 pecially if it be graded and progressive — and this, by 
 the way, our constitution again prohibits, .for taxation 
 must be equal, not proportional, — is theoretically the 
 most equitable of any. In America, alas, theory and 
 practice stand at opposite poles ; but in Germany the 
 income tax is not a dead letter, nor does it trap the 
 nation into perjury. Under the German system of 
 self-assessments, not under oath, but upon honor — there 
 is scarce one single default during the year — millionaire 
 and pauner both inform the government of their own 
 free will, of the amount of their earnings, and assume 
 the burdens of the social obligation in due and progres- 
 sive proportion. This country offers premiums to per- 
 jurers, for whoever among us is shrewd enough to cover 
 wrong under the semblance of right, who understands 
 where and how to "see'^ tlie assessor, finds a community 
 readv to worship him for his sagacity; in Germany, 
 public opinion would point the finger of contempt at 
 the man who would under one pretext or another shirk 
 his duty to the state. 
 
 This income tax was proposed by congress, acting 
 under the theory of specified rights and limited func- 
 tions of o-overnment. Suit is brought and our highest 
 court decides in favor of whom? In favor of the richest 
 men that we have in America — in favor of the owners of 
 real estate and its proceeds, and the tax as it w^as left by 
 
 7 
 
the first decision of the court, since revoked, was muti- 
 lated into a tax, not on capital, but on industry — on 
 intelligence. 
 
 But, friends, do not misunderstand me. I do not 
 wish to create the impression that I undervalue the 
 great revolution wrought under the magic of this phrase 
 "the inalienable rights of man/' No student of history 
 but will agree that few are the days so golden in their 
 radiant light for humanity as are the hours when from 
 inspired lips dropped the words "Equal and inalienable 
 rights of man." For what would be man if he had no 
 rights? A slave he might he. AA^at boot would there be 
 to owTi the torch of intelligence, yet not to have the 
 right to allow its light to illumine a path self-chosen? 
 A slave is not a man, even if he have, like Epictctus 
 of old, a, mind as keen as that which comes to genius 
 alone, even if there be within him, like that of the mis- 
 shapen Eoman slave, a soul answering whatever music 
 of the heavens fills the earth, even if his be a purpose 
 as strong as that of him who struck the rock and forced 
 it to give water, or stamped the desert and compelled it 
 to become a paradise. What boot to him intelligence or 
 love if another man's will decides what he shall do, if 
 another man's word commands whether he shall sing 
 or sigh, shout or sliriek, shrink or shunt — what to him 
 is freedom of mind, is intimacy with stars and sun, 
 with flowers and ferns, with rocks and rivers, with 
 blades and blossoms if another man can order him about 
 now to this, anon to another task, now to the book open- 
 ed, now to the scroll chisped? "WHiat boot it to him if 
 in his soul there tin<7le and ring the call ''Thou shalt, 
 thou oug-htst" — if another man bids him do or not do. 
 Without riirhts, and riirhts to your own life, rights lo 
 your own property, rights to your o^^ti name, rights to 
 
 8 
 
yonr own reputation, rights to your own self-decision 
 how to shape life and Avhat career to follow; human life 
 would be not little less than God's, but much less than 
 the beast's. 
 
 This cannot be denied, and I can well understand, 
 as everyone of us must, that the formula "the riglits 
 of man'^ was a very magic to hypnotize the age of its 
 birth. By its wine human society, during the last 
 hundred years, has been heated to intoxication. Yet 
 the fumes of this inebriation are about passing away; 
 to-day the best men understand, the deepest minds com- 
 prehend, the tenderest hearts feel it, that something 
 more is needed than the doctrine so bewitching, which 
 carried the fathers to advance along the rugged path .)£ 
 progress — something still stronger than the, by our 
 predecessors deemed final, doctrine of the rights of man. 
 
 Progress is ahvays composed of three movements. Tn 
 Hegelian jargon, thesis, antithesis and synthesis mask 
 the successive phases. We hold by virtue of our suc- 
 cessorship to others certain things to be true. By virtue 
 of our own doubt, however, we are impelled to advance 
 beyond the line marked by inherited and transmitted 
 truth. To accomplish this, we are led to deny the pro- 
 positions of the fathers. The proofs suggest themiselves 
 readily, that this is the method employed by the evolv- 
 ing: mind of humanity. To dwell on one example for 
 all, let us watch the course of religious progress. Belief 
 breeds denial. When the new religion is ripening to the 
 new harvest, from rostrum, if not from pulpit is pro- 
 claimed the new knowledge that the old gods are not. 
 Atl:e'sm, rank denial of the old tenets, is the first 
 movement in the progressive unfolding of religious 
 thought. 
 
In ])olitics, the pcndiihini swings from despotism and 
 absolute monarcliy to moh-nile and the terror. The 
 French revolution is tlie denial of the political 
 dogma of the Boinhons; Rousseau and the 
 French encyclopedists had theoretically spelled their 
 great "No" in answer to the French king's positive 
 declaration "L'etat cest moir It was absolutely neces- 
 sary in order that humanity might progress, that as 
 emphatically should be spoken the protest, even by the 
 mouth of the guillotine, " The state is not thou, but we, 
 the people, are the state; each one is an 'I,' and as an 
 ego, each one has the right to utter his pronunciamento, 
 'the world is 1/ " 
 
 This is political atheism, so to speak, certainly po- 
 litical atomi?m, as the insistence that God is not, is 
 religious atheism. 
 
 But, if humanity abides by this negative, the electric 
 circuit producing the healthful current can never be 
 closed. Every electric circuit has a negative and a 
 po'5iti^T pole. In the grander electricity of evolving 
 life, negation is one pole, but it alone cannot engender 
 the polar force of circling eternity, and transmit it to 
 evolving humanity through progressive time. 
 
 Naturally humanity requires hundreds of years where 
 the individual is chained to one solar revolution. "A 
 thousand years," says the psalmist, ''are in thy sight 
 as yesterday when it is passed. '^ Tliousand years — mere 
 breadth in the time movement of eternity. One sweep 
 of the pendulum in the great chronometer of divinity. 
 Eemember, incomprehensibly long are the spans of 
 time elapsed since the sun has flamed forth yon beacon 
 light above, weaving life and love into our very earth. 
 Its fire was kindled millions and millions of years ago ; 
 and even this lamp is a novelty among the torches burn- 
 
 10 
 
ing in yon heavenly regions nnfathomable and un- 
 searchable above, around, beneath us.' Our sun is a 
 mere babe compared to the other suns which hold by 
 the nijagnet of attraction and the hatred of repulsion, 
 larger, grander, older, sidereal families studding with 
 their diamond isles the bottomless ocean of firmamen- 
 tal life in its movements heaving and falling, keeping 
 time to cosmic creations^ cradle songs. 
 
 Xow, this being the case^ how laughable is the arro- 
 gance to presume that we, whose years are three score 
 and ten. whose thoughtful life is perhaps but two score 
 years — should understand the universe's plan and 
 method, and distinguish between the real and the 
 seeming ! 
 
 Atheism, the first intoxication of impulse toward 
 progress, the biting pinch of hunger for broader life, 
 the outburst of passion for greater liberty, today has 
 learned to exchange its arrogance for humbler gannents. 
 Xo one who thinks may be an atheist. Agnosticism is 
 the virtual acknowledgment that atheism is dogmatic. 
 This successor to atheism leaves the question open — 
 perhaps there is — perhaps there is not that which we 
 may call God and divine. And even agnosticism is not 
 the creed of the age. Thousand voices, and not from 
 the swamps of thought, but from the Alps of reflection 
 — thousand tongues, not from the ignorant, but from 
 the wise — not from the blind, but from the seers, havr^ 
 intoned asrain the jubilant affirmation : "God is.'' 
 But this God is not the God that was before atheism 
 protested, before agnosticism expected and waited — a 
 God more sublime than he to whom altars were built 
 and sacrifices were brought and prayers were sung, 
 hymns were chanted — a God for whom though the uni- 
 
 11 
 
verse is too small to contain him, the human heart is a 
 sanctiiai\y, encompassing and all-inclusive. 
 
 This development of religious thought may be 
 studied in striking outlines in the history of man's atti- 
 tude toward religion during this very century. The 
 rights of man were first held to be incompatible witli 
 the claims of the church. Priest and altar were sus- 
 pected of a picked intrigue to forge chains wherewith 
 to fasten man and mind to the block. The God 
 preached by the church was, therefore, vociferously de- 
 nied by the prophets of the rights of man. The sec- 
 ond solDcr thought, however, brought about a modifica- 
 tion of the positions maintained by either party to the 
 contest. If the church may be said to represent — to 
 employ Hegel's phraseolog}' — the thesis and the profes- 
 sional free-thinkers, the antithesis, the better view in- 
 fluencing both the church and its old-time antagonist 
 has culminated in a new synthesis. 
 
 The same process is at work in the domain of political 
 and sociological matters. The rights of man were first 
 urged as protests against the rights of kings and ruler?. 
 Their emphasis marked the appeal for liberty of the 
 masses over against the privileges of chosen classes. 
 Through this formula ran and rang the outcry of hu- 
 manity for a larger life. But it alone is mere atheism 
 in the field of politics. It undermines the essential life 
 of society by putting the individual first and society last, 
 reducing the latter to a sum in arithmetic, an equation 
 in statics, in stead of regarding and treating it as a 
 theorem and function in dynamics. 
 
 Society is more than you and I, and a third one 
 added together. It is more than the millions and mil- 
 lions that live simultaneously in geographical juxta- 
 position on this globe. A nation is more than the sum 
 
 12 
 
of the individuals that compose it. Humanity is more 
 than so many milliards of individuals and detached 
 souls. The individual is by society — society is not by 
 the individual. Society is the mother — the individual 
 is the child; the reverse proposition is untrue. This 
 positive conviction of the dynamic constitution of so- 
 ciety and the consequent new appreciation of the scope 
 of individual action in and under it had to be acquired. 
 The world is learning it now. One hundred years 
 have gone by since the emphasis was laid on the indi- 
 vidual, and we are again in the schoolroom spelling out 
 a new primary lesson, this new synthesis ; the fruitage, 
 the complement of the antithesis of the inalienable 
 rights of man which in its day was the protest, the 
 atheism, in reaction and revolt against the dogmatism 
 and despotism of the church and state. 
 
 What is inalienable? It is that without which we 
 cannot think that man can continue to be man. It is 
 that which, if denied, robs humanity of its vitality. 
 What makes us men? Is it the body which we have.'* 
 Scarcely. Body like our has also the animal. It may 
 be different in shape from ours. Our nearest of kin in 
 the family of brutal life has four hands. He may 
 only for a minute walk erect. He can climb ; but even 
 he foreshadowing the more perfect animal life as incor- 
 porate in us, is certainly not man, and we are not he. 
 Physiologically considered, indeed, we are but animals. 
 Our gastric system is a repetition of what we find even 
 in the lowest kind of mammals. Our respiratory 
 oigans are under the same law as regulates the breath- 
 ing apparatus of lion or tiger, of dog or of cat. Our 
 optic nerves, auditory nerves — the nerves that transmit 
 the sensation of touch, smell, all these gateways to 
 knowledge are physiolop^ically operating in our bodily 
 
 13 
 
laboratory as they do in that of fox or wolf, or elephant 
 or what not. 
 
 Physiologically we are animals. Is this all we are'' 
 With a mere body, we are not men. The animal dies — 
 we die. Our dust is like that of animal. Is this all 
 there is of man? No, man stands for more and re- 
 quires more. What is that something which is inalien- 
 able k) man — involved in the notion of man, without 
 v^'hich man would not be? 
 
 First, man to be man must enjoy freedom. He must 
 be his own master. No one else must lord it over him. 
 Freedom to be or not to be, seemingly, even must be 
 his; freedom to determine his own career — the mean'? 
 he would employ to attain the goal. No one may say 
 to him "Thou shalt be a shoemaker; thou shalt be a 
 physician." Happily for most of men, none may even 
 sav, "Tl^ou shalt be a rabbi." Man must and may de^ 
 cide what he will be, and how he will proceed to satisfy 
 his ambition. Without this freedom of self-determina- 
 tion man would not be man. 
 
 The ancient form of social organization denied him 
 this freedom altogether. In Egypt, birth decided one's 
 career, as in the animal kingdom birth fixes the status 
 and station. Kitten will be cat. Cub of lion will be 
 lion. Elepliant will be elephant. Acorn will be oak. 
 Seed will be plant. Upon this animal plan were or- 
 ganized India, Egypt, and a remnant of this animal 
 compulsion, a survival of this order of instinctive or- 
 ganization, is absolute monarch}^ This emphasis of 
 Egypt recurs a broken echo in the philosophy of the 
 monarchical principle. ; 
 
 This freedom, without which man would cease to be 
 man, estal)lishcs tlie inalienable right to our life, to our 
 liberty, to the pursuit of our happiness. We cannot be 
 
 14 
 
man if we l^e denied the control over the product of our 
 hibor. The fruitage of our exertions must be ours, or 
 else our freedom is a shadow, an illusion. 
 
 The convict labors. He is not master over what lie 
 produces. This absence of self-determination and con- 
 trol is the characteristic clement in penal hard labor. 
 This constitutes the degradation of penitentiary pro- 
 ductivity. They are not well up in the science of pen- 
 ology and in the psychology of labor, who insist that 
 labor as sucli is punishment. Labor as such is never 
 degrading. On the contrary, it is the exponent of our 
 humanity. "Thou shalt till the earth'' spells not a 
 curse; it words a blessing. Adam even before the fall 
 worked. In the fall the law of work chang-ed into a 
 curse because his very conduct betrayed his ^desire to eat 
 without working. That the convicts are sentenced to 
 work is not essential to their punishment, but the de- 
 grading part of their treatment arises from the fact 
 that their work is under compulsion, the choice of the 
 kind of work is denied them and the proceeds of then- 
 efforts withheld from them. Xot that the slave had to 
 work made his lot so depraved, but that his was neither 
 the choice nor the fruit of his labor. This was the 
 demoralizing influence of the institution of southern 
 slavery. What we j^roduce as free men shall be ours. 
 As we are its creators^ so must we be its owners. In- 
 alienable, therefore, is the right to our property. But 
 — and this is the new aspect of the matter, till recent 
 days too readily overlooked — as these rights make, and 
 as their absence unmakes humanity, so there are duties 
 that make and unmake humanity — duties without which 
 man is not a man. ' 
 
 What those duties be that are inalienable, we shall, 
 if you so will, study together a week from today. I^et 
 
 15 
 
inc dismiss you today with another preliminary thought. 
 Our age is sick unto death. Possibilities weighty and 
 most stupendous will arise in the very next years to 
 come. Nothing is so fatal as the sense wJiicIi 
 is very prevalent among those who have been 
 favored — and that rightly perhaps — that things as 
 they are, are right; that only a few malcontents are at 
 work undermining the foundations of society. Were 
 these foundations of the granite of justice, the few mal- 
 contents could not make an impression. Set rats to 
 work to undermine one of the everlasting hills — we may 
 in patience afford to laugh at the impotent attack of the 
 insolent rodents. If these malcontents, granted they be 
 malcontents, succeed, it must be because, where the 
 rock of justice should pillar society, they meet only the 
 quicksand o*f selfishness and self-interest. 
 
 This confidence is not shared by the best of men. 
 Books indicate the thought of an age. There is not a 
 work on ethics, there is not a work on social economics 
 that today leaves the press but speaks of this problem 
 as the pivotal question of the age. Whether the mod- 
 ern author believes that things must change or that 
 things might perhaps be continued as they are — whether 
 he be capitalistic or socialistic, anarchistic or collec- 
 tivistic in his sympathies or opinions, matters not; he, 
 the thinker, knows that this is the crucial question of 
 the age — grave in more than one sense of the word: 
 grave for civilization, for it might become its doom; 
 grave on account of the possibilities of a nobler life 
 which it holds in its womb. Yea, this deluding confi- 
 dence in the justice of the established order must abovit 
 all else be laid aside. The modern pulpit is charged 
 with an anti-capitalistic leaning, — at least, the inde- 
 })endent ])ulpit is under this suspicion. There be i^ul- 
 
 16 
 
pits that are not independent. Thev are denied their 
 inalienable rights. They are the little pieces of paper 
 that are put to the tail of the congregational autocrat's 
 kite. These dependent pulpits who do not own their 
 ifouls are, indeed, not those that sound the message of 
 the day, but where independence is vouchsafed the pul- 
 pit, or the platform, ethical culture or theistic. Chris- 
 tian or Jew^ Unitarian or Mohammedan, all men of 
 thought have recognized this as the main problem of 
 modern religious study and solicitude. Why? Because 
 the seers today understand that on the philosophy of 
 rights, inalienable rights alone, humanity cannot work 
 out its divine destiny. 
 
 Poets even speak of this one question. Poetry, dow- 
 ered to soothe and gifted to dispel doubt and trouble, to 
 dry tears and to charm forth smiles — even it evokes 
 from her lyre the stress of ominous warning. Sociology 
 has become poetic. It has consecrated its poets today. 
 As philosophy formerly was wedded to the lighter muse, 
 so today sociology is bound in conjugal union unto the 
 genius of song, the messenger of bounding thought, 
 catching the echo of the ages and translating it into the 
 speech of the heart. 
 
 In a few years more, art will be busy with nothing 
 but this one question. Yea, it is so now. Eemember 
 you from your visits to the World's Fair those lurid 
 gloomy pictures — workmen by the smithy's fire, wield- 
 ing the hammers? Even strikes^ with their misery, 
 their passion, their distress, and their despair have in- 
 spired the painter's pencil. As slavery put the sharj)- 
 cned chisel and protesting marble into the hand of 
 sculptor, so industrial contention will soon bend to its 
 thought and its despair, its doubts and its hopes, bronze 
 and iron. Tomorrow in our museums will greet us — T 
 
 17 
 
see her even now — woman's figure representing linman- 
 ity, lifting up her hands in prayer for light, impelled 
 by a lasting love for all her children. The masses have 
 heard the call. As they listen it is for them burdened 
 with the rancor of seeming injustice of which they are 
 the victims. One king they say we dethroned when 
 we stormed the Bastille, one king reft of his 
 scepter when we thundered forth to England 
 across the Atlantic : ^'Thou shalt not rule over 
 us; the colonies shall be independent. They shall 
 be for themselves, not means for thee to swell thy cof- 
 fers." And yet tins monarch had his ideal thought- 
 associations. King had the glory of history woven in 
 haloed light around his crown ; king stood for the na- 
 tion, incarnate and personified in his very being. To- 
 day gold is king. The scepter it wields has neither 
 heart nor love, has neither patriotism nor honor. Gold ! 
 To that king we must slave, say they. "Is it just?" 
 ask they. "It cannot be changed," they are told. "If 
 it cannot be changed, then life is of all delusions and 
 deceptions the rankest and the bitterest. Then let us 
 die now, and as in the Gottcrd?emmerung, in the last 
 light of the dying dusk, the despairing daughter of the 
 gods immolates herself in the ectasy of the sacrifice, let 
 us immolate ourselves in the fire of battle rather than 
 starve in the slums and sink in the slime of our boasted 
 order. The burning palaces will at least give us 
 warmth for a few hours, and the stored up provisions 
 divided will at least for one day still the hunger; hu- 
 manity is a mere sham, let us, blind Samsons, snap the 
 pillars of its temple. What are we more than Samsons 
 blinded, let out to give sport to the thousands gathered 
 in Dagon's honor. Bend the pillars. Fall, thou roof! 
 Euin everywhere — death at last!" 
 
 18 
 
Is there no hope? Is there no other answer? Is 
 there no sacramental word? I have no doubt there is. 
 It comes in the old word of religion. It appears as the 
 eternal work of "G-O-D/' as the theologians spell it. 
 The moral teacher spells it '^D-U-T-Y.^' He who loves 
 his humanity will have God and duty supplement our 
 beloved catch-word "inalienable rights." God and 
 duty, God and obligation, God and responsibility — 
 compose the grander phrase and appeal. Inalienable 
 rights? 'No, not alone are rights inalienable — inalien- 
 able are also duties. Wliat these duties are, friends, let 
 us study when next we meet. 
 
 19 
 
THE INALIENABLE DUTIEvS OF MAN, 
 
 II. 
 
 The social question is focal to all moral and intellec- 
 tual efforts in this, the last decade of the nineteenth 
 century. This puzzling and j^erplexing problem has 
 arisen not in consequence of the fancy and caprice of a 
 few malevolent malcontents; it is. the writing on the 
 wall which may well cause us to pause and pounder, as- 
 sembled at the banquet as we are, where, in profanation 
 of their right uses, we are degrading to common 
 triviality and frivolity, the sacred implements of the 
 temple. Feasting at the table, we are aroused from our 
 sense of security by the unknown script mysterious on 
 the wall, which fain we would read and interpret, but 
 which transcends for the moment our gift of divination. 
 
 Of course, Epimetheus is always wiser than Prome- 
 theus. Standing upon the high outlook of centuries 
 and turning our glance backward, we have but little 
 difficult}^ to know why such perplexities had to follow 
 in the wake of our civilization. The fathers, lacking 
 the pedestal of another century, did not command the 
 sweep of vision to warn them and to prophecy to them 
 that their hopes would be realized only in scant meas- 
 ure ; that their confidence that with the translation into 
 institutions of their political philosophy based on the 
 doctrine of rights, peace would prevail and content- 
 ment would smile would be doomed to sad disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
They who gave us our political creedj the morality of 
 individualism, the theory of rights, were men — thisinust 
 be oA\'ned, and I shall be the last to dispute it — of higli 
 and strong idealism. They believed what they taught. 
 For them there was no word so sacramental as the 
 word "man." Humanity spelled for them a majesty the 
 light of which paled before none other. At its sound 
 their very soul thrilled in response, and by its message 
 they were baptized into a higlier redemption. 
 
 But the man they dreamed about was but an ideal. In 
 the dust he was not real. Man, the existing man, carried 
 yet too much of his native clay to render possible the 
 realization of a dream pinioned and pivoted on this 
 ideal trust in man, and this ideal religion of humanity. 
 
 The freedom of man for the fathers was a call to 
 service. For their sons it was an opportunity to enslave 
 others, and we, their grandchildren, are bearing the 
 yoke which unwittingly was prepared when the fathers 
 phrased their doctrine of rights without emphasizing the 
 corresponding duties upon which every right is hinged. 
 Our age is still vocal with the appeal for rights. Many- 
 toned is the insistence on the rights of the laboring man ; 
 the rights of womanhood, the rights of capital, the rights 
 of property, the rights of matrimony, the rights of the 
 church, the rights of commerce. Are ever wdiispered the 
 suggestions that if- labor has rights it also has duties ; 
 that if womanhood has rights, womanhood has obli- 
 gations which none other but woman can discharge; 
 that if capital is shielded in rights it is also weighted 
 with responsibility; that if property may shelter itself 
 behind the rampart of certain privileges, it must also 
 carry certain burdens? I ask, is even the suggastion of 
 sucli a co-relation broached in this age so insistent upon 
 the rights of this class and the other? This one sided 
 
 2 
 
fanaticism for rights is the fatal phase of our present 
 civilization. 
 
 Under the sway of the individualistic theor}- of rights, 
 and under the necessities of evolving industry, capital- 
 ism, as I called it last Sunday, found its greatest oppor- 
 tunity. The men of the French Eevolution, to whom to 
 a large degree we owe this theory of rights, believed, as 
 I have before suggested, that after th© triumph of their 
 theory and its application to things social and human, 
 peace would unfold its priceless glories. They were 
 speedily disenchanted. Did immediately after the storm 
 of the French uprising, which rocked their often-ac- 
 claimed freedom's cradle, had subsided, the zephyrs of 
 peace waft across earth? Far from it. Our century was 
 welcomed into life by the boom of cannons, and I am 
 afraid it will be sung to sleep in its grave by the same 
 brazen music of destructive ordnance. AMien nineteen 
 hundred stepped forth from the mother ocean of eter- 
 nity the globe was writhing in the agony of war, and 
 and now that it is hurrying on to its burial, earth is 
 shakinor imder the tread of armies trained in fabulous 
 numbers for the work of murder, organized and digni- 
 fied with the name of patriotism. 
 
 Peace did not event. Its failure to appear engendered 
 for the nations the necessity of assuming financial obli- 
 gations created by the complications of political situa- 
 tions which the generation that originally incurred them 
 could not discharge but left to its children and chil- 
 dren's children to carry, and perhaps only ultimately 
 to wipe out. Or. to be plainer, these wars of modern 
 times led to national indebtedness, and national in- 
 debtedness tempted from its hiding place in unexplored 
 mammoth caves the mephitic maelstrom of financial 
 speculation. Before this century, never was aught 
 
 3 
 
like this known. Napoleonic genius and influence, a 
 curse, to a certiiin extent, to our liumanity, and its off- 
 spring, the political and patriotic ambitions of the new- 
 born nations, saddled upon this globe the incubus of 
 national debts. Speculation Avas the mother of a new 
 class in society, the haute-finance — men who contributed 
 little to the great creative work of humanity, but by 
 manipulation succeeded in garnering great riches. 
 
 The growth of the industries again led to the same 
 end. The new inventions of steam and electricity, the 
 newly-acquired control over the forces of nature, ne- 
 cessitated the application of the economies of past gen- 
 erations on such a vast scale as to transcend the power 
 and possibilities of even a single nation, and in conse- 
 quence capitalization took a form it never had in former 
 (lays. The bond sprang into existence — the share was 
 invented for the railroads that had to he built, the 
 canals that had to be cut. The new necessities of 
 industry that had to be answered required an outlay of 
 money which the largest individual financial firm could 
 not provide, and thus capital became impersonal, and 
 being impersonal, lost its character as a moral power. 
 This impersonal capital played into the hands of the 
 haute-finance — men and classes who set out to pilgrim 
 to their Bethlehem by the newdy risen star of freedom 
 and were so dazzled by its splendor as to become blind to 
 its stellar companions. They neglected to remember the 
 conditions upon which rights are pedestaled — responsi- 
 bility and obligation. 
 
 A symptom of this growing understanding of the 
 heartless character of impersonal capitalism wdiich has 
 eliminated the capitalist and supplanted him by a soul- 
 less company or trust is found in Anti-Semitism. 
 Anti-Semitism is the bigoted protest against the 
 
 4 
 
haute- finance. Primarily and ultimately, in its ele- 
 ments it partakes of the nature of a socialistic crusade, 
 and in its groping emotions and unclarified passions 
 it unconsciously anticipates or swells the outcry for sal- 
 vation from capitalism. It is not the Jewish religion that 
 is assailed — it is not the race even that is the genuine 
 provocation of the outburst — these and similar faint 
 pleaders which demagogues bandy about are subterfuges, 
 pretexts and pretences. We Jews commit a fatal error 
 if we become satisfied that the prejudice which is so 
 loud to-day on earth against the Semite is in its roots 
 either woven of religious intolerence, or spun of radical 
 antipathy. It is essentially allied to social unrest. The 
 Christian nations committed a fatal error in the Middle 
 Ages when they forced the Jew to follow the dangerous 
 part of the financial go-between. But errors committed 
 in history recoil rarely upon the heads of their devisers ; 
 they visit most frequently and fearfully their victims. 
 Such has been the fate of the Jew. He had no help, no 
 alternative. Every honorable walk was barred against 
 him. There was no room for him in the economy of the 
 feudal society of the Middle Ages. He was indeed a 
 stranger among strangers. He constituted an iniperiura 
 in imperio. He had not even the power to shape his 
 own destiny — it was shaped for him. 
 
 But whether there be contributory guilt on his part, 
 or his innocence be brilliantly established, in the results 
 the case is not altered. At the beginning of the new 
 era, gradually the Jew was emancipated. Feudalism fell. 
 The old barriers, wliich were restrictive, but also pro- 
 tective dykes and dams, had yielded, and the 
 flood swept, without let and hindrance across the 
 broad fields newly tilled and now about to be 
 newly planted. Among the many that were 
 
loosened from tlieir old moorings and flooded 
 away from tlie stagnant slips and berths of shut-up 
 servitude into the broader and fresher current of 
 unrvStrieted freedom was also the Jew. Still, even then, 
 on the whole, scarce another pursuit was opened to him 
 and his talent, than the career of the financial go-be- 
 tween. That he made the most of his almost only 
 opportunity may be worthy of comment, but is not 
 open to censure. Furthermore, if we examine under the 
 micro^eo])c' his stewardship of the great capitals 
 entrusted to his control, and compare his with the use 
 made of similar opportunity by others that are not Jews;, 
 we shall find that the Jew always has had a by far 
 tenderiT conscience than was that of his non-Jewish 
 competitor. 
 
 But still he has not come to be regarded as the sole . 
 representative of the lirmte-fi nance, and the cry raised 
 against him may for this reason be said to be spnipto- 
 matic of the growing anger at the increasing power 
 of impersonal and therefore irresponsible capitalism. 
 Those pulpite and writers are short-sighted that in 
 season and out of season, will point to our influence in 
 the financial world as redounding to our credit. AVould 
 to God we never had had a Eothschild ! Xevcr a 
 ^'promoter" of railroads, had been inscribed upon our 
 roll ! Would to God that the European bourses had 
 never seen a Jew ! The circumstance that the new 
 aristocracy by the grace of the almighty ducat is recruit- 
 ed largely from the ranks of nominal Jews and Jewish 
 "Boersianer," is not a blessing to Judaism. Against 
 impersonal capital and the capitalistic organization of 
 society this new crusade nominally purposed against the 
 Jew is, in its elements and in its subconsciious instincts, 
 directed. As all social movemients of whatever kind 
 
 G 
 
are first tested by trying the experiment with the Jew. 
 so anti-capitalism takes on naturally the griise of anti- 
 Semitism; as in Russia the attempted nationalization 
 of the empire linds its first expression in rabid per- 
 secution of the non-orthodox Jewish elements of the 
 population. 
 
 I could detain you this whole morning and my 
 proofs would not be exhausted even then, by calling 
 your attention to other movements in our age that all 
 ];ioint with an emphasis which only fools can overlook to 
 the fact that our theory of society, of individual rights, 
 lias sutfered shipwreck. Every right pr-esupposes a duty, 
 and instead of ringing the changes on inalienable rights, 
 we must turn and begin to clink out the more cheerful 
 metallic music of the inalienable duties of man. 
 
 Other salvation there is none. All measures proposed 
 for the social redemption of man are but palliatives. 
 Single tax is but a patent medicine — those that believe 
 in it may indeed be honest, but an honest trial of the 
 nostrum will at once reveal its inadequacy to solve the 
 difficulty and to bring about the era of good-will and 
 peace. 
 
 Progressive income tax is another plaster — a porous 
 piaster vaunted to be a cure-all for the social lumbagoes 
 and rheumatisms; but should it be applied, even it 
 would give merely a temporary relief. The symptoms 
 are not local. The disease is not functional — it is 
 organic, and the ache here and the ache there, a strike 
 here and a riot there, a lockout in this place and a 
 trust in another, are but manifestations of the general 
 disorder and disorganization into which the body social 
 under the stimulant of one-sided freedom and rights has 
 lapsed. 
 
Tho euro will be wrought not by these and other 
 external lotions and salves, but by a complete moral 
 regeneration. Yea, the Christian doctrine of regenera- 
 tion is true in so far as the crude man is never the 
 perfect man — crude society is not the perfectly con- 
 stituted society. Our generation is in need of a new 
 birth to-day and a baptism into the spirit of duty, for 
 altogether too long we have been taught that God's sacra- 
 ment to mian is rights — inalienable rights. 
 
 Let me point out that the ethical culture movement 
 is spreading and growing every day more and more. 
 Would you account for this phenomenon? It is not, as 
 miany suppose, its religious liberalism that has made 
 that nlo^ement timely. It is not because it^ platform 
 is freer than ours or its exponents more learned than are 
 our teachers. There be thousands indeed that worship 
 at that shrine, as there are thousands that worship 
 at other shrines, who know not the character of the god 
 whom they adore. They float down stream — without 
 knowing whither. Others seek in this new hope a new 
 diversion. Tlie sweet tongue of oratory that wings 
 forth poetic words, sprinkled with the spice of foreign 
 birth and oriental atmosphere, captivates and holds 
 them. But these and their sympathies do not account 
 for the deeper legitimacy of the movement. 
 
 May I tell you what I believe to be fundamental to 
 this cause ? It speaks a language with which the syna- 
 gogue always resounded; it emphasizes a view w^hich 
 the doctrine of Judaism was always accentuating — a 
 note to which we Jews will only listen when it is struck 
 elsewhere; for which we arc deaf in our own synagogues, 
 though anxious to accept its invitation when elsewhere, 
 under new names, under new colors and new pretences, 
 
 8 
 
it is extended us. This note is the serious emphasis of 
 dut}'. I 
 
 You doubt my explanation? You perhaps question 
 the correctness of my diagnosis? On what philosophy 
 is ethical culture grounded? On the philosophy of 
 Kant. And was it not Kant who confessed that two 
 contemplations always caused him to bow his head in 
 reverent adoration? Of the two that bind his tongue 
 mute, and hush it in the silence of utter awfulness pro- 
 duced by the consciousness of his responsibilities, the 
 one is the star-spangled dome of heaven — that great cos- 
 mic jewelcasket open to the inspection of man night 
 after night. Kant confesses that when he looked up 
 to those diamond fields in heaven^ he was ever thrilled 
 anew with holy awe. The other is the voice within, that 
 eternal "thou oughtest" — the, command of duty ovei^ 
 rowering him with the same reverence. Ethical culture 
 has from Kant and Judaism taken as its fundamental 
 key-note — Duty. 
 
 Yea, this note was not original with Kant. He was 
 not the first to write the melody of life in this key. The 
 prophets of old — those men of fiery tongue, of bitter 
 complaint, of ungainly address, of controversy unrelent- 
 ing — the men who seemingly could but censure and 
 never prais:^, chide but never cheer — these men had 
 summed up universe and life in the one word Duty 
 long before Kant in Koenigsberg established his doc- 
 trine of life upon the same rock. 
 
 That thinking men today — the thoughtful minds, 
 turn a.a>iin to tlic proclamation of duty, is proof of the 
 correctness of my statement. It is thi? that the people 
 in the desert need. ^'Give us water," said they to Moses, 
 "or we shall die." Society today, the thinking ones, 
 the feeling ones, have tasted the water of the wells of 
 
 9 
 
Mf^dcni culture and have found them bitter. The peo- 
 plo are impatient under disappointment. They hunger 
 for tlie proplietic word, the insight to cull the wood 
 w-hich cast into their bitter well renders sweet their 
 drink. This drug, the element to be added, is duty. 
 We so far have too much and always insisted upon our 
 rights. 
 
 Kiglits of labor, rights of woman, rights of capital, 
 rights of property, — they are war cries. Duty of 
 woman, duty of labor,' duty of capital, duty of property, 
 are the angelic trumpet-sounds of peace. 
 . I defined, you w^ill remember, last Sunday, inalienable 
 as something without wdiich man could not be man. I 
 have gone through the gamut of rights and proved to 
 you in my bungling way, that the rights. which are in- 
 alienalile, are indeed of this character. But which are 
 the duties that are inalienable? 
 
 Man does not come into this world complete. This 
 the theorists of rights have overlooked. For them every 
 human being — every human individual is a complete 
 man. We say society produces man; but society is a 
 progressive life, conditioned in its progress upon the 
 developmicnt of the individual. 
 
 Do you doubt that society is our mother? The terra 
 society in this connection is used in the sense in which it 
 appears in modem sociological literature. Society the 
 one cnnd tho all — t1iat mysterious, impalpable something 
 which is ever present and active, w'hich is within u>. 
 and of which we are part, and yet is more than all of 
 us together, added up as an arithmetical sum, more than 
 the aggregate of a column of figures. Do you doubt 
 that "this grander something — thi? society, is our 
 mother^ our progenitor? 
 
 10 
 
It is not true that man appears in this world free. 
 Tliere is no one that conies into this world free — free in 
 the sense that he is a. blank — that with him history be- 
 gins anew^ that he owes no obligation to the past, and 
 therefore has no. duty to the past in the living present 
 and no responsibility for the future. If instead of 
 having been born in America, some of us should have 
 been born in Germany, would they have knocked at life's 
 gate hanrh'capped or helped, as they were when they came 
 into tliis new sublunar sphere here? Certainly not. 
 The child of a red Indian on our western plains is by 
 the accident of his birth different from the child that 
 comes into life in Chicago, in Constantinople, in Calais, 
 in Kalamazoo, or elsewhere in this world. We are not 
 free when we enter this world; we are by birth, and 
 even prcuatally, made into something — we are condi- 
 tioned. 
 
 Those that argue from the basis of man's freedom as 
 a birthright, and would apply it to religious life, for in- 
 stancCj make, in my estimation, a fatal mistake. I have 
 had philosophers tell me that they allow their sons and 
 daughters to choose their own religion. And with pas- 
 sing strange logic they assign this as their reason for 
 declinirg to hi them receive religious instruction in 
 their younger days. "\ATien our children grow up, say 
 they, let them decide to what, if any, religious fellow- 
 ship they would belong. You might as well argue that it 
 is just to let them choose their language. You condi- 
 tion them to a language when you make them mem- 
 bers of your family, yea, even arbitrarily you put this 
 restriction upon them. Society asserts itself at once m 
 the very first manifestation of our rational life. In 
 forcing the child to the use of a ready-made languages 
 the family interferes with its freedom of choice and 
 
 11 
 
movement. Tliis liolds good of religion. Keligiously 
 considered we are, the children of our parents as clearl}^ 
 as we are this in language. But as even the proper use 
 of one's mother tongue is a matter of culture, so is the 
 proper penetration into the genius of one's ancestral 
 religion. If you permit this function, to atrophize, you 
 mutilate your children's souls. This time or other will 
 revenge itself, and where, under culture, the sweet vine 
 grapes might he grown, the neglected slope will run to 
 thistles and thorns. | 
 
 I have yet to see one of those professionally "liberal"' 
 Jews who to be rid of Judaism deny their birth, who 
 does not display all the traits that are said to make the 
 Jew distasteful, and that in a degree not attained by 
 the most bigoted orthodox among us. The explanation 
 is simple enough. A field that should have been culti- 
 vated, left fallow orTows onlv weeds. 
 
 In Germany thousand and one Jews have sought re- 
 lief from Judaism through the coward's backdoor — 
 baptism. They hoped that water would wash off the 
 stain of the hereditary curse. Their expectations have 
 not been realized. The Jewish curse asserts itself even 
 after their conversion. Had that. curse been turned 
 into a blessing by proper training, they would be Jews 
 indeed, but also much more of men. 
 
 The young men who have been systematically left 
 in ignorance about religion and Judaism have not grown 
 in humanity. They have not escaped what, to use their 
 phrase, curse there is in Judaism. By personal obser- 
 vation, I know that those weaknesses wdiich are creating 
 the prejudice against the Jew, are most pronounced in 
 the very persons who have made it their life study and 
 main purpose to hide their Judaism. Even where their 
 countenance does not indicate the certificate of birth, 
 
 12 
 
their conduct and general attitude betray the ghetto an- 
 cestry. The safest method, it strikes me, is that which 
 awakens in one who is a Jew by birth the sense of the 
 glory and greatness of spiritual Judaism. 
 
 Predicating of man at birth a freedom which is non- 
 existent, our theorists commit the fatal error to let run 
 ^Wld what must be trained. Our theory is that man's 
 duties run back of his birth and become operative at 
 birth. On this basis, we rest our insistence that every 
 new incarnation of humanity is morally held under 
 bonds to its forbears to continue the work bequeathed 
 by them to their natural successors and heirs. 
 
 The conception of man as realizing himself ever 
 anew through history's onward movements implies the 
 continuity of civilization. With no man, be he never 
 so great, does civilization begin anew or over again. He 
 has always predecessors on whose shoulders he stands. 
 He must make of himself in turn a stronger pedestal for 
 those that come after him. 
 
 The very word culture which is central to our modern 
 creed is tantamount to the avowal that man in his 
 natural condition is not complete. But the theory of 
 absolute freedom denies the necessity of culture. If we 
 accept it, we agree that man is perfect at 
 birtli, there is no need of further growth. Natural 
 man, far from being perfect, is imperfect. He owns 
 the legacy of his predecessors, but this endowment come 
 to him must grow through him and be transmitted an 
 enlarged estate to others that will come after him. He 
 is one of many, and these many do not act as an arith- 
 metical aggregate; though each one of them is to a cer- 
 tain extent a unit, their totality represents a life which 
 is richer in energy than the sum of all units added to- 
 
 gether. 
 
 13 
 
This inti'rdi'pciKlL'iiL'c of past and present, and present 
 and future, of individual and society, postulates the ful- 
 lilnieut of man's inalienable duties, as the cmph'atic 
 coniplenient of this natural claim to his inalienable 
 rights. To illustrate the distinction — let us view at 
 close range one of our generation's pet insistences. By 
 the doctrine of freedom and natural rights, many a 
 man has l)oen induced to believe that the world owes 
 him a living. This notion has almost become a matter 
 of fanaticism witli some of the modern agitators ; and 
 the argument is indeed though specious very seductive. 
 Xo man — this is th£ manner of its reasoning — was con- 
 sulted before his birth whether he would accept life's 
 burden. Others have, without our consent, called us 
 into existence ; they, therefore, owe us compensation for 
 the load which they have laid on us. 
 
 In Scliiller's E^euber, this creed is expressed in forci- 
 ble words, but also with a crude and most disgusting 
 ( niphasis. Schiller's Ea^uber is the echo of the doctrine 
 of freedom as understood by his day. For this drama, 
 fruit of the stress and storm period of the poet's devel- 
 opment, reflects characteristically the temper of an age 
 which has a great grievance to s^.t right, and hurls its 
 protest against all existing institutions and prevailing 
 opinions. With the instinct of a poet, the intuition of a 
 1 igh mind, with the fervor becoming the messenger of a 
 new revelation, I might say, Schiller pursues to its last 
 consequences the new protesting thought. His hero, in 
 asking his parents what he owed to them, has indeed put 
 forth in one concrete case, the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. The bold insistence upon rights blinds our eyes 
 to the counter proposition that rights presuppose certain 
 duties. 
 
 14 
 
I have heard hitel}- a good mother argiiing that chil- 
 dren are not under obligation of gratitude to parents. 
 She would invert tlie relation and put parents under 
 obligation to their children. This good mother uncon- 
 sciously professed at this late day the moral mood of 
 Schillers first outcry. Modern society, to a certain ex- 
 tent, acts upon the presumption that a certain command 
 should be amended to read: ''Honor thy son and thy 
 daughter, that thy days may be long on the earth which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee.^' Tliis revised edition 
 of tlie Decalogue has found favor in the eyes of many of 
 the up-to-date "Utbermenschen.^' Young men are com- 
 fortably of the belief that the fathers must provide for 
 them, and their sisters think that the mother^s place 
 is that of a willing minister to their wants. The theor}^ 
 of absolute rights furnishes the philosophical back- 
 ground for this creed. Practically it resulted in a com- 
 plete disassociation of duties and rights. The efforts 
 of "the wise and prudent" have been directed to the one 
 end to reserve the rights for themselves and to saddle 
 the duties always upon others; for if the world is our 
 ('ebtor. if it owes us a living, and we are entitled to the 
 freedom to collect just debts, we should be fools not to 
 make the most of our privileges. Life under this 
 philosophy is reduced to a series of combats from which 
 the stronger every_ time will emerge the irresponsible 
 victor. The theory of inalienable duties will reverse 
 the relation. We are indebted to the world. As soon 
 ns we have attained our majority, the world, primarily, 
 owes us nothing. We must prove our worthiness to be 
 the recipients of the world's bounty, the world expects 
 us to fill a place in its economy. 
 
 It is the world which opens for us opportunities, and 
 endows U'^ with capabilities. There is no normal man 
 
 15 
 
but is given his chance and is furnished his means. 
 These means are given to us in the crude state — it is 
 for^ us to develop them. Self-culture is one of the first 
 among the duties that are inalienable. 
 
 It goes without saying that up to a certain period of 
 life this obligation to fit future men for their intended 
 st<ation and service, is upon the guides of infancy and 
 childhood. It is theirs to see to it that the new indi- 
 vidual be trained into usefulness; but when the days of 
 dependent cluldhood and of half dependent adolescence 
 are over, the duty of self-culture ensues. Man is never 
 jierfect. Is man but a machine? Acceptance of tins 
 definition would amount to abdication of the crown 
 which should grace our brow. Man thinks and feels; 
 thought and feeling must be cultivated and developed. 
 The doctrine of inalienable duties tells me that every 
 man is called to do something in behalf of the world. It 
 is the concern of correct moral and intellectual peda- 
 gogics to discover in each case that part which the indi- 
 vidual is destined to play. 
 
 Why are so many lives shipwrecked? The answer is 
 easily given. Society, as now organized, does not on the 
 whole permit men to gravitate toward the places for 
 which by capacity and love they are best fitted. And 
 furthermore, fo many, by a false sense of values, are in- 
 duced to ne.g-lect their natural place and seek other sta- 
 tions, considered to be higher and more honorable, 
 which they have not the ability to fill. I am of the 
 opinion, confirmed more and more as with increasing 
 years the range of my observations widens, that ship- 
 wreck in life, as far as moral weakness or perversity ha?3 
 not invited the disaster, is almost invariably traceable 
 to a false education — to the incapacity to find or even 
 to discover the place for which the stranded sailor over 
 
life's ocean was nieant by primarily natural and second- 
 arily developed talents. 
 
 Yet, in the face of these thousand-voiced warnings, 
 heavy with sighs and tears, what course do parents per- 
 sist in adopting? The boy is only fit to be a cobbler. 
 Yet our pride does not allow us to have him follow this 
 honorable, if humble craft. Our boy a cobbler ! No ! 
 He must be a physician ! He is pressed and pushed 
 through the schools; our ambition is finally attained. 
 Our son is at last a doctor of medicine. Buti — his de- 
 gree to the contrary notwithstanding — his cobbler na- 
 ture crops out. He is too little of a cobbler to be of 
 use at the bench, and never enough of a physician to 
 serve with credit at the sick-bed. He is a "mis-fit," 
 to use a very graphic, and I hope well understood, 
 phrase. He is a "mis-fit.'' He is in a position which 
 is too large for him, and into which he cannot grow. 
 
 On the other hand, the pressure of social condition 
 often forces one that is gifted to be a healer, to work 
 night and day in the sweat-shop. Occasionally genius 
 will burst the bars, but genius always "is exceptional. 
 Genius, indeed, laughs like love at locks and keys. 
 Genius in the manger takes its seat at the right hand of 
 God on the judgment day. Genius imprisoned, be- 
 comes the advocate of liberty for all hunijanity. Bur 
 where one man of genius rises out of and above his 
 original estate, thousand souls warmed by talent's 
 milder glow fret themselves to nothing, like the life of 
 a moth, under untoward social circumstances. It is a 
 jjitiful fact that the fewest of us have awakened to the 
 sense of their responsibility incumbent upon them for 
 the impulses we may give to the course of the lives en- 
 trusted to our moulding care, with a view to lift or 
 lower them to their proper level. 
 
 17 
 
If the right to life is inalienable the duty to make 
 the proper use thereof is as emphatically inalienable. 
 The individual is always under the social relation. This 
 is the fulcrum for his lever. Not as he lists, but as 
 the social welfare and his power for social service sug- 
 gest, must the individual shape his owm career. And 
 again, our life is primarily not free from the social 
 bond woven by the ancestors from whose loins we sprang. 
 To continue and enlarge the historical current on the 
 bosom of which we have been cradled is a duty more 
 sacred than which none there is. Language, nationality 
 and religion are historic forces — treasures transmitted 
 from fixther to son. No child is free to -neglect them. 
 The last bom has merely the right to deepen their chan- 
 nel, to enrich their contents and increase their potency. 
 
 And this same consideration will throw much light 
 on the most modern of our perplexities, the rights of 
 woman. It is clear that men and women have not iden- 
 tical social functions. Nature and history both have 
 co-operated to differentiate their respective contributions 
 to the common wealth. Nature's edict in this sphere Is 
 unalterable. Tlie glory of motherhood is denied to the 
 male. Nor can an unbiased mind bring himself to be- 
 lieve that the division in labor between the sexes as 
 determined by historical usage is altogether to be dis- 
 missed as arliitrary, and therefore subject to elective 
 readjustment. Under normal conditions, man will do 
 most for society ])y continuing to be the bread-winner, 
 while woman will do most valual)le social service l)y 
 assuming as heretofore the responsibilities of the home 
 circle. This whole controversy is thrown out of the 
 proper angle of vision by the mistaken notion to which 
 I liave called attention before, that certain lines of 
 service represent higher social values than others. To be 
 
 19 
 
the political arbiter of the nation's destiny is by no 
 means of greater worth tlmn to be the mother or educator 
 of the future men and women destined to be the nation 
 tomorrow. The duties of womanhood are as inalienable 
 because as essential to woman's truer life as are its 
 rights. 
 
 And does this not also hold good in reference to 
 'property ? To own the fruit of one's labor is an inalien- 
 able right; to dispose of one's earnings by will and 
 testament may eyen be included in this category; though 
 some theorists would question the legitimacy of such 
 latitude. Yet, property is our ovm only to do therewith 
 what shall prosper the common life. Tlie right to pos- 
 sess is limited by the duty to utilize one's own for the 
 social good. By the bill of duties, the individual propri- 
 etor is only the steward and trustee for others. The->e 
 "others," are, in concentric circles, his family, his home 
 city, his nation, his racial kinsmen, his coreligionists, 
 his co-partisans. But it is for "others" not for self 
 that he must administer his belongings. ISTor is property 
 ever more sacred than humanity. Wherever the right 
 of property clashes with a duty to humanity, the former 
 has no credentials that are entitled to consideration. 
 iSTegro slavery is one of the many illustrations of this 
 precedence of man before money. Where wealth is 
 root.ed in the ruin or the degradation of men, it is a 
 usurper that should be accorded the shortest shrift. 
 Moloch competition shall never feed on human sacri- 
 fices. A civilization and a liberty that allow this idol 
 to exact this precious tribute are barbarous. 
 
 Labor, too, has duties, not merely rights. In order 
 to break shackles, the consecration of a new slaveiy in 
 the place of the old, is of all follies the most egregious. 
 Yet this is what they aim at in these our days of in- 
 
 19 
 
dustrial warfare. Combination is turned into conspir- 
 acy, under the prevailing system of industrial mili- 
 tarism. A union which presumes that all men are equal 
 for consumption and therefore exacts for unequal service 
 equal compensation, violates the eternal law of justice 
 as flagrantly as does a wage scheme which reduces hu- 
 man beings to the low pass of dead tools. Duty, not 
 right, must also on this battlefield work the final paci- 
 fication. 
 
 The experiences of the last century have clearly shown, 
 and the most recent social disturbances have once more 
 emphasized, the weakness of the social structure ground- 
 ed exclusively on the theory of rights. This theory was 
 commissioned to do the pioneer's work. ' It removed old 
 and unjust barriers, cleared jungles- of superstitions and 
 prejudices and pushing on into regions promising 
 greater latitude for unfolding humanity, surveyed the 
 possibilities of an unborn future. Still, after the pio- 
 neer, the permanent settler should plough and plant the 
 clearings. And for this task, the path-finder creed of 
 absolute freedom and riglits, of irresponsible individual- 
 ism, is woefully inadequate. 
 
 The philosophy of duty must regulate and modify the 
 creed and grced'^of rights. But the sceptre is allowed 
 this better conception only where a deeper appreciation 
 of man's moral nature obtains. What our generation 
 stands in greatest need of is a thorough-going moral re- 
 generation and new religious re-awakening. 
 
 Of course, if morality is prudential calculation of 
 proximate or remote advantages, and religion is mor- 
 bid ecstasy or mechanical ceremonialism or myopic dog- 
 matism, either energy by us invoked will prove inef- 
 fective. But morality sanctified into religiousness and 
 religion consecrated to morality is that impulse never 
 
 20 
 
ceasing wliich urges man to strive after an ever-enlarg- 
 ing perfection^ while and because it quickens within him 
 ever anew the consciousness of his imperfections. Ee- 
 ligion and morality of this blessed character are magnets 
 drawing man out of his isolation and egotism^ hitching 
 his cart to the universal purposes and linking his one 
 life both to the All-life and the life of all. The degen- 
 eracy and impotency of our fashionable and official reli- 
 gion, as well as the sham and shame of our morality of 
 outward conventionalism and secular respectability, have 
 contributed most to make the fruits of our civilization 
 so impalatable. In a much truer sense than its crowned 
 coiner wot of, the winged phrase which dropped froxTi 
 the first German Emperor's lips immediately after the 
 second attempt on his life, rings out an insistent warn- 
 ing. "Our people/' said the aged monarch, '^must be 
 brought back to religion." I should say, religion must 
 be recovered for the people. Among thinkers the royal 
 observation has indeed aroused responsive sympathy. 
 Man, this is the universal concensus of those most com- 
 petent to speak, needs again to learn and ever after to 
 remember that he is not a machine. The neglect of this 
 simple but most vital truth has brought about the de- 
 humanization of the millions for the enrichment of a 
 few millionaires. This is fundamental to the unrest of 
 the "dispossessed." It is not true that the strucrgle on 
 their part is ultimately waged for larger loaves of bread. 
 The pith of modem social agitation lies in the outcry of 
 cramped and outraged humanity. The masses would be 
 men not tools, souls not ''hands/' They rebel against 
 the brutal apotheosis of success and the successful. Their 
 bitterness is unconsciously a rigliteous resentment of the 
 shifting of life's center from the heing to the having, 
 from the doing to the owning. Human life has a value 
 
 21 
 
which is independent of the law of demand and supply. 
 This proposition is religion's fundamental announcc- 
 ]nent, its translation into practice morality's prime so- 
 licitude. The religion of this sacramental humanity and 
 the morality of its practical grace is needed in both our 
 palaces and our hovels. Men shall again come to bs 
 something rather than strive to have something. Honor 
 shall again be the reward of the being, not, as now, be 
 the concomitant of the having. The pyramid of success 
 shall not be built that in measure as it slopes toward the 
 apex, both the being and the having of those at or nearer 
 the base are gradually but effectively crushed out, and 
 for the few who have risen thousands have sunk from 
 the joy of humanity into the brutal stupor of slavery, a 
 condition under which they cease to be rated as men and 
 are counted only as ^'hands.^' Belgium, the paradise of 
 unrestricted Manchester commercial individualism and 
 industrial fredom, strikingly illustrates the effects 
 upon humjan beings produced by the practical applica- 
 tion of the brutal religion less valuation by the standard 
 of the ^Tiaving." But it is not merely at Brussels where 
 til is ]\rolocli is worshiped; its votaries are numerous in 
 Bombay and Bagdad, in Berlin and Barcelona, in Buenos 
 Ayres and Baltimore. Their sacerdotal hymns might 
 borrow Heine's words : 
 
 "Ein Eecht zii leben haben nur, die etwas haben. 
 Und wenn du gar nichts hast, so lass dich begraben.'' 
 
 This arrogance of wealth, barren of every consious- 
 ness of its own social function and of all conscience, is 
 responsible for the bigotry of hatred enthroned in the 
 hearts of the masses. E/cligion preaching the gospel of 
 duty, and morality practising this evangel, alone will 
 build the bridge over which humanity will pass on to 
 social co-operation and mutual confidence. 
 
 22 
 
Prophetic religion struck this ke3'note at a time when 
 Rome or Greece had scarce learned to lisp the alphabet 
 of their dialects. Amos and Hosea taught that justice 
 and righteousness are the pillars of true humanity, when 
 Rome was as yet unknown in the annals of time. Upon 
 whom, then, is the duty to herald forth the prophetic 
 message? Upon us, the sons of those to whom the pro- 
 phets first spoke. Judaism was always the lover of lib- 
 erty^ but it was also always the teacher of responsibility. 
 Duty is our sacramental spellword, for without it man^s 
 dust is reft of its destiny to frame divinity. The 
 eighteenth century thought was born under the zodiacal 
 sign of rights, that of our day must be under the sidereal 
 symbol of duty. In the exhibition of paintings which 
 the French government arranged in 1889 to illustrate 
 the progress of French art during the century elapsed 
 since the Revolution, I noticed one which betokened not 
 merely the master's great technical skill in colors and 
 lines, but still m^ore his deep appreciation of the change 
 in task for our day from that which saw the Bastile's 
 capture. The canvas showed two panels. The first rep- 
 resented the spirit of 1789 : young men and women rush- 
 ing to the combat, courageously rallying around a fiag 
 bearing the legend : "Droits," rights. The other was a 
 confession of what should be the spirit of 1889. The 
 sciences and industries incarnated in human forms be- 
 spoke the beholder^s attention as the achievements of 
 modern civilization were brought to his notice by means 
 of suggestive symbols and signs. But this scene was 
 under the consecration of the spellword : ^'Devoir " Duty. 
 Yea, that painter was indeed a John Baptist. His ser- 
 mon was an appeal to repentance, a preparation for the 
 advent. The Messianic consummation hinges on hu- 
 manity's conversion away from the preliminary dispen- 
 
 23 
 
sation of man*s vialicnahlo rights to the Apostolic faith 
 in mans inalienahle duties. "Devoirs/' not "Droits," 
 sums up what shoukl be the creed of the true man. Un- 
 der its glow and light, as the prophet puts it, the desert 
 will wreathe itself in flowers, the dry land will gush 
 forth its bubbling springs. By its inspiration, man will 
 be brought up to God and God be found again in man's 
 bosom. Society — a vaster life, a co-operative brother- 
 hood — will come into the heritage of peace, and greed 
 will be displaced by a holier zeal, that to outstrip others 
 in service and usefulness — in character and being — not 
 in enjoyment and having. Let us follow the Elijahs 
 of our day;. they precede the birth of the nober Messi- 
 anic age of Duty. 
 
 24 
 
MytH, Miracle and 
 MidrasH 
 
 A. discoxjr.se: 
 
 fBY 
 EMIl^ G. HIR.SCH 
 
 The Reform Advocate 
 • Bloch &. Newman, Publishers 
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MYTH, MIRACLE AND MIDRASH 
 
 Goethe tells us that ^'das Wimder its des Grlaubens 
 liebstes Kind/' In the spirit of his times and a true 
 exponent of their philosophy he insists that the miracles 
 recorded in the ancient documents of the synagogue 
 and the church partake of the character of free inven- 
 tions. According to his theory which is even at the 
 present day shared by many, they have sprung from the 
 prolific womb of faith. He inverts, as is easily seen, 
 the commonly defended doctrine which would have faith 
 rest on mii-acles. He suggests, therefore, the thought 
 that miracles cannot corroborate the contentions of 
 faith, but that the acceptance of miracles presupposes 
 t1^e dominant influence of faith. Undoubtedly this 
 view is the truer. In Lessing's Nathan the same con- 
 struction reappears in the dialogue between the titular 
 figure of the play and his foster daughter. She main- 
 tains that her rescue was wrought through the inven- 
 tion of an angel sent by God on this errand. The wi&er 
 mind of the maturer and far-traveled man sees through 
 her conceit. He detects in it the fruitage of her nurse's 
 training. Had she not been taught to believe in the 
 existence of angelic mediators, her escape from the 
 greed of fire would not have impressed her as the direc^; 
 interference willed by God. It is his calm confidence' 
 that the greatest miracle and wonder is that the mighty 
 manifestations of wondrous power bv which we are sur- 
 rounded everywhere become so familiar to us as to lose 
 for us the import of the miraculous. 
 
 1 
 
Nathan's thesis carries, indeed, a telling point. Just 
 now, when in the full flush of our wealth of intimate 
 communications witli nature wc arc apt to overlook the 
 unyielding limitations of our knowledge of nature's fun- 
 damentals, the caution uttered by the high-prieF"Jt of re- 
 ligious tolerance might ^rith profit be laid to our heart. 
 
 It is not true that the sciences have lifted the curtain 
 of mystery from olf tlie face of creation. The wisest 
 among us is at his best imprisoned on an 
 island of no wide area, surrounded on all sides 
 by an ocean screened l)y impenetra])le banks of 
 fog. The beating of the tide upon the shore, and drift- 
 wood cast up from the unseen immensity beyond, en- 
 courage the imagination intent upon construing from a 
 few fragments the plan of the unexplored waste; bur. 
 more than such provisional because anticipatory vision 
 into hidden things and currents even the bold sciences 
 of tlie present day do not vouchsafe to never so devoted 
 a courtier of their secrets. If mystery be the ground- 
 work upon which faith builds its altars, and unexplored 
 depths invite its miracle-fed assurance, there is not the 
 least excuse for holding that the exact sciences have put 
 an end to the dominion of religion, or closed forever the 
 portals of its wondci* palace. The clear thinker has no 
 doubts that the sciences themselves have resort to fait'i 
 as intently as have the creeds of the world. 
 Matter and force, the conservation of energ}', 
 atom and molecule and molecular affinities; the 
 very hypothesis of evolution through natural selec- 
 tion; the genesis of life and the production of thought, 
 tlie chemical substratum of consciousness and similar 
 concepts or operations which are the stock phrases and 
 familiar contentions of modern scientific reasoning, are, 
 if examined to their ultimate elements, airy, thought- 
 
 2 
 
woven assumptions of the limnan mind. The sciences 
 presuppose as vital an imagination as does faith; they 
 make as heavy drafts upon the store of our credulity as 
 does the credo or the metaphysics of the church, the 
 synagogue, and the mosque. 
 
 But religion to be' true to her mission in these days 
 of growing knowledge cannot bar her territory against 
 the inroads of reason. Eeason is indeed unable to ex- 
 plain t^ll that presses upon our curiosity "with the de- 
 mand for an account of its rise and development, of its 
 purpose or destiny. "There are more things between 
 beaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your 
 philosophy.*' But the irrepressible passion resident in 
 tlie breast of man for an harmonious interpretation of 
 the universe and of life will not admit that two conflict- 
 ing and mutually contradictory theories purporting both 
 to hold t]ie key to the unread arcana or the known facts 
 of nature and fate, can be both true. Modern thought 
 bas convinced itself of the truth that the world is under 
 fhe dominion of law. Order and regularity of sequence 
 between cause and effect are the postulates of the as- 
 simiption that one law reigns in the heights and in the 
 depths. The suspension of that law for whatever end 
 in view wonld not be evidence of omniscience or omni- 
 potence. Thinkers have no diificulty to establish this 
 proposition. 
 
 An all-wise Creator must have foreseen in the hour of 
 the creation the future necessities calling for the modi- 
 fication of the general law; if he did not possess this in- 
 sight he cannot be credited with omniscience. But if 
 he had tliis anticipatory knowledge of the insufficiency 
 of his general and ordinary provisions and nevertheless 
 neglected to so amend them that at the proper crisis 
 they would respond spontaneously to the emergency, his 
 
 3 
 
only alternative left is the denial of omnipotence to 
 the creative energy. On either horn of the dilemma 
 the belief in miracles suffers irreparable and fat^l havoc. 
 A God who cannot foresee that his original laws will not 
 operate to carry out his intentions under all circum- 
 stances lacks omniscience; a God who foreseeing this 
 defect cannot so arrange his work as to meet the future 
 emergency lacks omnipotence. The appeal to God's 
 omnipotence for which there is neither limitation nor 
 impossibility cannot be admitted in rebuttal. For in- 
 herent in our idea of God is the necessity of His acting 
 reasonably. Our God cannot be swayed by whim or 
 caprice. The supreme law-giver is himself under the 
 law. Law and liberty are not mutually exclusive. 
 Slavery involves obedience to a law which is contrary to 
 our highest nature. Liberty roots in compliance with 
 the law which corresponds to the essential exposition of 
 our own being. Compulsion is absent in freedom-^ not 
 so the voluntary and spontaneous execution of the in- 
 herent necessities under which our life to be complete 
 must be lived. 
 
 In God there is law and freedom, in Him both are 
 identical. A lawless God is inconceivable. The omni- 
 potence of God is not of one fibre with its popular mis- 
 conception which makes it the equivalent of the license 
 to do according to unrestricted pleasure. An all-power- 
 ful God will not and cannot turn water into wine or 
 suspend the operation of the law of gravitation. ^'Ha- 
 Yad Ad'honay fil'zar?" is, if adduced to decide this 
 problem, at once answered by every one who understands 
 what the philosophical concept of the deity implies, in 
 the negative. God cannot undo and deny himself. The 
 verv implications of the idea of God reject this possi- 
 bility as not within the range of his power. Being the 
 
 4 
 
lawgiver he is himself under his own law. The good 
 old Talmudists so often misunderstood and undervalued, 
 especially by such as know of them and their thoughts 
 only from hearsay, had already this appreciation of the 
 implications inherent in the God-idea. Much fun has 
 been poked at them for having discussed the to us more 
 than empty question whether God observes the minutiae 
 of the rabbinical ritual code, and for having indulged in 
 the to them by no means fanciful descriptions of God 
 studying the law in accordance with the approved 
 canons of rabbinical disputations and wearing the pre- 
 scribed phylacteries. Eisenmenger and his followers 
 both among the non-Jews and the Jews have not beea 
 slow to call attention to these well-nigh blasphemous 
 vagaries and exuberances of rabbinical impudence as 
 they chose to style them. But to my mind these Hag- 
 gadic speculations betray on the part of their authors a 
 deep appreciation of the philosophic thought that God 
 as the giver of the law is by the very essence of his God- 
 hood inherently bound by that law. This throws a new 
 light on the oft-quoted but only rarely correctly appre- 
 hended "nomistic" character of the rabbis' God-idea. 
 
 But be this as it may, certain it is that Judaism in all 
 of its phases attributed little if any evidential force to 
 miracles. The attentive reader of the old law bearing 
 on the credit to be given a claimant of prophetic powers 
 will recall without much difficulty proof abundant to 
 this fact. T\^e ^'Torah is not in heaven and it is not 
 beyond the sea.'' In the decisions of disputed rab- 
 binical applications of the law, supernatural signs and 
 portents played no part. They were rejected. This is 
 clearly shown in the well-known passage (Baba Metzia 
 59 b) where the experience of Rabbi Elieser is recorded, 
 wl:o, thrice appealing to miraculous phenomena which 
 
 5 
 
he provoked, found his contentions none the less em- 
 phatically rejected by the ar^scmbled teachers. Even 
 the heavenly voice "Bath KoV was not accorded a vote 
 in that court. Of course, the Biblical record remem- 
 bers a multitude of miraculous happenings. The rab- 
 binical writings are in turn not poor in stories of men 
 who exercised what we may call miraculous control over 
 the stores of nature. The rabbinical Rip- Van- Wink] o 
 'Honiah, the "circle-man/' is probably well known to 
 even you as the commander of the clouds. But the 
 rabbis felt the difficulties unavoidably involved in the 
 assumption of an arbitrary interference on the part of 
 God with the laws of creation, and in order to dull their 
 edge taught that whatever is chronicled as such came to 
 pass in obedience to a condition imposed in the very act 
 of creation. The Red Sea, for instance, was in the he-' 
 ginning so constituted as to divide before the fleeing 
 host of Israel when Moses lifted up his staff. Jonah's 
 fish was created with the destiny to save the truant fugi- 
 tive from God's commission (Tan'hum Toldoth Noah). 
 In this way the rabbis obviated the dilemma analyzed 
 aljove. The miracle ceased, in fact, to be a miracle; 
 the event occurred in consequence of a fore-ordained 
 natural law. The law of nature was not suspended nor 
 violated. One who is acquainted with much of th.:3 
 latest Cliri'stian literature on this mooted matter knows 
 that in taking this position the teachers of the rabbinical 
 school anticipated the reasoning of the most modern 
 spokesmen and writers on apologetics in what is called 
 the new orthodoxy in church circles. 
 
 Tlie esteem in wliicli workers of miracles were held by 
 the rabbis was not of a very high order (Sabbath 53). 
 Even pious 'Honia was rebuked by Simon b. Sheta'h for 
 misleading the people (Ta'anith 23). Throughout Tal- 
 
 6 
 
miidic and also the later philosophical writings of the 
 Middle Ages the tendency is clearly indicated to find 
 wherever possible a natural explanation for the miracles 
 or to interpret them as allegories. Abarbanel, for in- 
 stance, does not scruple to say that the story of Jonah's 
 lodgino- in the fishes belly was a dream which the 
 prophet had. Such stories as represent God's appear- 
 ance to men in the guise of an angel, a human being, a 
 devourino' fire, or seated on a wonderfully splendid 
 throne, were held to have originated in the imagination 
 of the beholder, (Jebhamoth, 49 b., Maimonides Moreh 
 II, 43 : Yesodhe Hattorah I, 9 ; and Einhorn Xer 
 Tamid, p. 13.) , In Albo's IH'arim (III, 8) the inci- 
 dent of the burning bush is explained on this basis. 
 And wlien the old interpreters failed in this manner to 
 IT tiiralize or allegorize the Biblical story they some- 
 tin es would indicate their doubt in an unmistakal)le 
 maimer. (See Yonia 54, b.) Xot to lose myself in a 
 liaystack of quotations, I must forego further citations 
 from our mediaeval authorities. One statement, how- 
 ever, bv ]\[aimonides deserves to be recalled. He em- 
 phasizes the fact that according to our religion never 
 can a miracle- affect the moral nature of man. Catas- 
 trophical conversions in consequence of sudden marvel- 
 ous illumination are therefore excluded. And this is a 
 distinction which Jewish orthodoxy when contemplating 
 rhristinn rr-vivnlism may Well accentuate. On still an- 
 other point ]\raimonides is equally strenuous. Tlie 
 laws of nature are permanent. Xever by miracle is the* 
 fundamental order of creation interrupted. 
 
 But what is our attitude? Do we belong to the blind 
 an 1 unquestioning believers that accept the written 
 word of the Biblical stories without inquiry ; or shall we 
 rana-e ourselves under the banner of the rationalists ; or 
 
-Nj 
 
 reject the stories as idle if not intriguing inventions 
 palmed off for purposes of a questionable moral nature 
 upon a credulous people; or shall we hold that these 
 stories are fundamentally the productions of minds in- 
 capable of recording what they saw because diseased and 
 subject to hallucinations? For all of these widely 
 variant assumptions defenders have arisen both within 
 and without the household of Israel. Believers who 
 ask not and inquire not, notwithstanding the better ex- 
 ample set to them by the old teachers of the rabbinical 
 times whose words I have in part quoted^ are by no 
 means in the minority among the present day Jews. 
 For, bear in mind, it is absolute folly .to hold that we 
 American Jews constitute the preponderating party and 
 have therefore the right to maintain that what we de- 
 clare to be the tenets of modern Judaism, has universal 
 currency as such. 
 
 Those who would excommunicate one or the other 
 congregation for what they choose to denominate its 
 heresis, might have a care lest others visit the same fate 
 upon their head. If questions of orthodox belief must 
 be submitted to the arbitrament of the census, every one 
 is bound to concede that the belief in miracles is an 
 article of faith in modern Israel. Those wlio accept 
 whatever story the Bible may contain as literally true, 
 to doubt which would be blasphemy, exceed in numbers 
 by far those who are inclined to modify this literalism. 
 We shall not relinquish our right to think. As we read 
 the story of our religion's gowth we believe ourselves 
 entitled to this prerogative. For according to our ap- 
 prehension of the genius of Judaism we deem lil)erty of 
 thought its distinguishing and vital attribute. Many of 
 the greatest of its teachers have exercised this privilege, 
 and have thus blazed the path for others that would 
 
tread in their footsteps. We cannot for reasons already 
 explained allow tliat niiracles_, however well attested, 
 prove anything. Our belief in God and our interpreta- 
 tion, of His nature is of too high an order and too rever- 
 ent a spirit to dethrone him and make him the occupant 
 of the low station of a tinker. His creation was per- 
 fect from the beginning, his laws self-given, adequate. 
 Miracles would detract from his majesty. Their ac- 
 ceptance implies less of God-belief than their rejection. 
 Wie, therefore, reject them. 
 
 But we are withal not of one mind with the numerous 
 would-be wise, who calmer that the Bibilical stories are 
 silhouettes cut out by men of nnsonnd mind. The mar- 
 velous representations of happenings are not free inven- 
 tions. Xor are- they reports of actual occurrences em- 
 bellished wickedly for some selfish purpose or innocent- 
 ly in order to point a moral lesson, by some recorder or 
 deceiver. Tiiis is indeed the view of rationalists of 
 whatever variety. Some of their clan have thought of 
 saving the letter of the story by disrobing it of its 
 poetry. That Moses wrought the deeds reported of him 
 they never doubt. He turned a staff into a serpent, he 
 divided the Eed Sea, he smote the rock and drew there- 
 from water. But, say they, while the people of Pharoali 
 were misled by appearances to credit him with super- 
 natural powers, and therefore were induced to listen to 
 his words, in reality he performed his tricks in a per- 
 fectly natural manner. His staff was of the order of 
 prepared tools which masters of the art of sleight of 
 hand know how to handle to good effect; he had studied 
 the natural ])henomena of Eg^'pt's river; he had ob- 
 served that at a definite period of the year the father 
 of the country, the Xile, carried in its muddy embrace 
 large quantities of the red sand swept from off the 
 
 9 
 
Ahyssininn iiioiiiitains, and relying upon this annual 
 now of ruddy slime lie utilized the first appearance 
 tlure.-)!' to trii^lden I'haroah into the illusion that the 
 i^ile's waters had been turned into blood. Jacob did 
 rot wrestle with an angel, no, his antagonist in that 
 memorable night was a disguised robber. The first- 
 born in Egypt were not slain by the angel of death mak- 
 ing his saddening rounds at the unsprinkled doors of 
 Pliaraoh's subject, no, they fell a victim to the cruelty 
 of Arab tribes whom Moses had hired to carry out his 
 final tlireat hurled into the stubborn king's teeth. 
 
 In this wise, rationalism attempted to save the credi- 
 bility of the Bible. If the holy writings of Israel can 
 ( scape rejection as historical records only by such heroic 
 treatment as this, had they not better court extinction r 
 They would certainly save their dignity and that of 
 their gi'eat heroes. Here Moses is' reduced to the role 
 of a mountebank, a deceiver, a murderer. What asinine 
 creatures must they have been who were "taken in" by 
 such cheap tricks as these. Had Pharoah never seen 
 the Nile run red with Abyssinian sands? If Moses had, 
 the king certainly had observed the johenomenon as well. 
 And how did the Arabs know in their pillaging incur- 
 sion which of the inhabitants happened to be the first- 
 born? Did they stop to insist upon seeing the birth 
 certificate, or did they cross-examine the mothers in 
 order t-o establish the primogeniture of their victim^? 
 These and a thousand similar questions might be put to 
 show how bimglingly the rationalist proceeds to save the 
 letter of the Bible. ' The attitude of the honest believer 
 is at least reverential, that of the rationalist frivolous 
 bevond sufferance. Religion and the Bible both migl^t 
 exclaim: ]\fay a good Lord preserve us against such 
 
 10 
 
friends, of our enemies we shall be able to take care un- 
 aided. 
 
 Less flippant and less arrogant than this species of 
 self-admiring rationalists, but equally unscholarly and 
 unbearable is that variety of theirs that never tires of 
 contending that with intentions of either a good or an 
 e\dl kind Moses and the other writers of the Biblical 
 accounts misrepresented as marvelous, simple natural 
 occurrences though they knew in their hearts of hearts 
 that their description did not do justice to the events. 
 The difference between this and the former set of ra- 
 tionalists lies in the admission that the fraud upon 
 others is perpetrated not in the act of performance so 
 much as in the posterior proclamation thereof. Never- 
 theless under this view Moses is a deceiver. He '^makes 
 God speak^' and ''leads the people to believe that God 
 has spoken/*' when he knows that he himself is the 
 author of the laws which he has proclaimed as divine. 
 It is true he does not perform his circus pranks before 
 Pharoah, but the waiting people outside are told by 
 him that a serpent had been turned into a staff and vice 
 versa. This method of explaining the miracles as after- 
 thoughts of the writers who report them has very justly 
 lost all cast and standing today in the forum of science 
 and scholarship. We may safely leave it to its w'ell 
 earned rest. In Germany no seriously minded person 
 will do it so much honor as to remember it, though with 
 us now and then a fossil of this extinct order may ex- 
 pose its nudity in open daylight. 
 
 Still another sect of rationalists deserves a passing 
 word. More earnest than its predecessors along these 
 dusty roads, of forced interpretations under the mis- 
 taken belief that the painful effort will save the Bible 
 and also do justice to the insistences of reason, this lat- 
 
 11 
 
ter day variation of the sciiool imputes no imnnoral or 
 questionable motives to the Biblical reporters. It would 
 have tlie stories pass as accounts ol' real occurrences. 
 But what of the miraculous they appear to carry, is 
 traced to the occulf treacheries of the human brain. 
 Dreams, hallucinations, autohypnotic processes are 
 charged with having produced the effects which mould- 
 ing the temper and modifying the outlook of the re- 
 corder forced his pen into grooves ignored by the sober- 
 minded. The voices which the prophet claims to have 
 heard were in so far real as he in his state of exaltation 
 actually and honestly heard them; the waters actually 
 oozed out of tlie rock, but the intense anxiety of the 
 thirsting people blinded their eye to the faet that Moses 
 had no part in the opening of the hidden spring. From 
 the subjective point of view of the authors, the event 
 took place exactly as they described it. They were not 
 false to the truth as they saw it when they ascribed or- 
 dinary happenings to the intervention of supernatural 
 power. 
 
 It requires no long explanation to prove that this 
 new phase of rationalism lias caught a few whiffs of the 
 spirit of modern methods and results. Tlie subjective 
 element certainly has played a part in the coloring of 
 old documents and their contents. The prophetic 
 idiosyncrasy roots to a large extent in the regions of the 
 subconscious. Nor is it to be disputed that for many 
 of the Biblical stories there is the basis of actual faci. 
 But these admissions do not cover the whole field. 
 There are limitations to the applicability of these fac- 
 tors. To reduce the experience of Jonah to the precipi- 
 tate of a dream will neglect the palpable certainty that 
 the book which bears the prophet's name is itself a par- 
 able into which has been worked one of the class of 
 
 12 
 
legends that are known as wanderers. The jewel casket 
 of many a nation's folklore exhibits thi« very gem ; un- 
 der many a clime and in many a tongue the fable is 
 rehearsed'of a singer or sage who escaped a watery grave 
 by the kindness of a finny denizen of the deep. The 
 framework of the Biblical story deserves no greater 
 credit for correspondence with an actual occurrence 
 than do the sister saga's of other climes. And if mental 
 processes to which the brain lends itself in moments of 
 intense excitement throw all the light which we desire 
 and can get on the mystery of the prophetic gift, we lose 
 the discriminating moment to distinguish the true 
 prophet from his namesake serving Baal. 
 
 The seers whose words have aroused the ages and still 
 have not ceased stirring the conscience of even our day, 
 drew their inexhaustible power indeed from other 
 sources than the potency to dream or to invite visions. 
 Theirs was an insight not so much into the hidden mys- 
 teries of unexplored nature as into the depths of human 
 passion, the motives of humran conduct, the relations 
 that should subsist between man and man. Theirs was 
 not merely the wealth of subjective illusions frequent 
 and universal indeed in the days when the lines be- 
 tween the personal and the impersonal, the natural and 
 the supernatural were as yet not definitely established. 
 Xo, they were not wonder-workers, and their 
 message depended not for its vital importance 
 upon the corroborating testimony of uncanny 
 and weird inversions of the usual sequence of 
 natural happenings. They were messengers of 
 righteousness, their burning words carried in their 
 own fire the credentials of a truth which to deny implies 
 the denial of man's dominant and central position 
 among the things created. Of the earlier prophets, — 
 
 13 
 
shadowy outlinc^i ol' piisliiiio- ciicrgies in days of stress 
 and strain rather tlian warm-blooded and high-towerinjj 
 personalities, — mi rack's are indeed recorded. Elijah 
 and Elisha anoear in the annals of the people's tradi- 
 tions cs men of supreme control over life and grave. 
 
 To rationalize about these heroic figures will not save 
 their historic character while it will reduce to weak 
 prose the strong poetry of their biographies. Nature 
 hates a vacuum, so does history. The vast ranges of 
 time of wliicli no definite person can be made the spon- 
 sor, centuries, however and generally under the strain 
 of ideas and conflicts that in their outcome affect mosc 
 vitally all future days, tradition loves to populate with 
 one or two strong individualities in whose life and labor 
 are crystalized tlie aspirations of their generation tra- 
 vailing in tlie birth-throis of the nobler faith. Such per- 
 sonalities may indeed be elaborations of actual men of 
 flesh and blood who walked and worked on earth. An 
 Elijah may have lived, but if he did he was not the 
 giant, the figure of whom popular tradition has carvecl 
 less out of the rude stone of the hero's real life than out 
 of the finer marble of the how nation's and the new 
 relision's and the new love's incipient strength which 
 during the period covered by the magnified hero's life 
 began to take form and assume influence. Such fig- 
 ures renresentjng vital movements are always clothed 
 by popular fancy with the purple of supernatural ruler- 
 ship. Israel's chronicles are not the only ones that ex- 
 hibit this tendency. It is the universal phenomenon, 
 in Greece and Eome no less than in India and tiu> 
 Northlands. 
 
 For religion and certainly for our religion the ques- 
 tion of the. actuality and the historicity of the Biblical 
 miracle^ and the Biblical miracle workers is inconse- 
 
 14 
 
qucntial. Eeligion does not depend upon facts, it is it- 
 self the stupendous and supreme fact. Even if mir- 
 acles had the force of proving the divinity of him who 
 performs them, a force which they have not, Judaism 
 abhorring the confusion between tlie supremely divine 
 and the human in the sense that God has ever assumed 
 body and form, is not interested in the vindication of 
 the truth as history of whatever report of miracles the 
 documents contain. Significant in this connection is 
 the catalogue of heresies which some of the authorities 
 of rabbinical theology have taken pains to register. In 
 none of them do we find the suggestion that rejection 
 of miracles will bar the way to the enjoyments of hon- 
 .ors in the gift of the religious community. 
 
 And we have warrant most ample for the proposition 
 that rabbinical interpreters were exceedingly free in 
 their treatment of Biblical miracles. Maimonides and 
 others insist upon the acceptance of the doctrine of 
 creation out of nothing, the recognition of prophecy, or 
 as we probably might say revelation, and the belief in 
 the resurrection of the dead. The first and the last in 
 raljbinical argiimentation are virtually one. The God 
 who creates by the power of his word, reason the doctors 
 of the school, has certainly the power to recreate the 
 body crumbled into dust. A study of Maimonides 
 theory of prophecy will show without much straining 
 of points that the great master had notions which are 
 not very far removed from naturalism, certainly much 
 nearer to it than to supernaturalism. 
 
 It goes without saying that our theolog}- has pro- 
 gressed beyond that of ^laimonides or other inediseval 
 authorities. We have no scruple to reject the belief In 
 the miracle of the resurrection ; our doctrine concerning 
 creatio ex niliilo is a postulate of our concept of the 
 
 15 
 
deity and not the outcome of our belief in the cos- 
 niogeiiy of Genesis. There would thus remain for us 
 only t!ie miracle of revelation or prophecy. It is true 
 in our pulpits the word revelation is by no means a 
 stranger. They that nse it are doing so in the full 
 knowledge of the fact tliat they connote therewith an 
 idea tuto coelo different from that which would have it 
 stand for the one event associated in Biblical history 
 Mith Sinai. Truth is, indeed, not of the dust. He who 
 finds it feels that he has had but little part in its dis- 
 covery. In this sense the word revelation may apply 
 without too mnch violence to the "unfolding of truth in 
 Israel through the mediation of those men of religiou^5 
 genius whom we have come to designate as the proph- 
 ets. In any other sense however, we do not accept the 
 theory that religion is based on revelation. How so -x 
 cosmic God with whom to associate human form was 
 even declared by Maimonides to be blasphemy can enter 
 into a mechanical commnnication with Moses and 
 descend to speak with him on earth is certainly beyond 
 the liniiits of our comprehension. Tlie ancient philo- 
 sophers of Judaism felt this difficulty. The possession 
 of a voice presupposes the existence of a body to pro- 
 duce sound. God having no body can have no voice. 
 For this reason it was assumed that the channel through 
 wliich God's words flowed to earth was a voice created 
 especially for this service. 
 
 Eabbi Jo.^e (Sukkali 5, a) contends that Moses never 
 ascended to heaven and God never descended to earth. 
 Though in the sul)S(T(uent halakhic discussion this 
 statement is modified to prove a point of interest in the 
 fixations of the dimensions of the ritually correct taber- 
 nacle, the boldness of the teacher's utterance evidences 
 the flexible character of the doctrine of mechanical rev- 
 
 16 
 
lation. And none can be blind to the significance of 
 the rabbinical provision against the adoption of what 
 they declared areh-heresy, the doctrine that the Decalo- 
 gue had the sanction of revelation in a higher degree 
 than any other part of the law. (Berakhoth 12.) 
 Revelation as a nTechanical process would indeed be a 
 miracle and as such as ineffective to prove truth as any 
 other marvelous occurrence. If the human mind is 
 able to grasp the truth revealed, revelation is unneces- 
 sary ; if the human mind lacks this power, revelation is 
 to no purpose. Pedagogical psychology understands 
 full Aveli that instruction to be elective can only con- 
 sist in rational guidance of the productive functions of 
 the mind. Wliat the mind is unable to produce no 
 teaching can impart. It might as well be mere sound 
 and will have as much power to affect men and their 
 conduct as n^ere sound would have. Biblical history 
 corroborates this experience of sound pedagog}'. Israel 
 moulds the golden calf immediately after the proclama- 
 tion of the second commandment. For all practical 
 purposes Sinai might liave remained silent. Lessing's 
 view of the function of revelation as an accelerated pro- 
 cess of origination through instruction might save the 
 general doctrine if we were not constrained to ask whac 
 the Sinaitic revelation contained that had not been 
 known before its occurrence, or that somie other nations 
 though not the recipients of the divine message from 
 on high were left in ignorance of. 
 
 Abraham, if we must believe the Biblical documents, 
 was a monotheist ; so was Moses. The great patriarch's 
 monotheism is reorarded by the rabbinical authorities as 
 the outflow of his own reasoning. (Maimonides Hilk- 
 hoth Akkum I, 3.) If he could arrive at this truth 
 without mechanical revelation, why should others re- 
 
 17 
 
(jiiiri' the supernatural instruction? The Greek think- 
 ers aud writers of the fonrtli century are clearly entitled 
 to be classed among monotheists. Confucius empha- 
 sized the moral })reee])ts contained in the two tables as 
 strenuously as they did^ and so did the Egyptian book 
 of the dead. It would then appear that the proclama- 
 tion of the Decalogue on Sinai was, as far as the people 
 to whom it was addressed were concerned, bootless, and 
 as far as ^other nations come into consideration, a work 
 of su})erarrogation. And which of the versions of the 
 Decalogue w'as the one which threw the mountain into 
 s]3asms? Can we seriously take refuge in the assump- 
 tion that tlie fourth commandment was in its two-fold 
 form ])roelaimed in the one and the same breath? 
 
 It has been argued that upon the Decalogue as re- 
 vealed rest the notions of rigM wdiich civilization has 
 everywhere adopted and .which will dissolve at once 
 should we conclude that Moses did not receive the two 
 tables in tlie manner outlined in holy Scripture. This 
 argument is the w^eakest of the many weak ones to 
 bolster up an untenable because irrational theory. The 
 Biblical account of the first murder assumes that Cain 
 feels his guilt. Without revelation he was aware of the 
 crime involved in his act. The "sons of Noah" are cer- 
 tninlv before the proclamation of the Sinaitic law by 
 all ral)binical theologians re])resented as under moral 
 obligations. An original revelation to Adam cajmot be 
 read into the Biblical texts. (Confer against Sanhe- 
 drin 56 b. Na'hmanides on Lev. XVIII.) The Romans 
 had a clear and comprehensive "Rechtsbegriif" though 
 they did not know of the (hypothetical) existence of 
 the Cod-given law. And moreover are the principles 
 of right enunciated in the Decalogue not barely formal 
 and rudimentary? Thou shalt not murder, gives us no 
 
 18 
 
information on what the law covers. Savage tribes 
 may also accept the principle but construe it to have no 
 ap^'licability to the n^ember of a foreign community. 
 In fact the Pentateuch itself is forced to reckon with 
 the institution of blood revenge. The bare enunciation 
 of this law does not furnish us a sufficient basis of right. 
 Xor does the Decalogue tell us what property is; it 
 leaves us in the lurch when We would know what to con- 
 sider adultery. Polygamy flourished after the procla- 
 n:ation of the Decalogue; fhis is proof that the empty 
 prohibition of adultery was very far from spreading the 
 foundations of absolute law which is, we suppose, what 
 Dr. Wise means when speaking of the "Rechtsbegriff.'' 
 
 Or shall we restrict our view of revelation to the 
 operation of the divine element in the prophets ? Con- 
 sulting the Talmudic authorities one cannot but hold 
 th-.t these teachers of our religion allowed a wide latitude 
 of opinion on this moot point. The personal character 
 of the recipient of prophetic power is by no means a 
 negative factor. Purity' of life, fear of sin are said to 
 lead to the outpouring" of the "holy spirit.'' (J. Sab- 
 bath I, 3 ; Shir ha-Sltirim Piabba editio 155-i, 3 a.) 
 Teachers of the Torah are credited with the possession 
 of the holy spirit. That the individual disposition and 
 conditions^ of the prophets modify the manifestations of 
 this "divine element" is a ready concession in rabbinical 
 exegesis. (Confer Sanhedrin 89. a: 'Hagiga 13, b.) 
 'Men like Eabbi 'Helbo, reporting an utterance of Pi. 
 Jochanan. and P. Simeon b. Lakish. had no very high 
 opinion of prophecy, and, in fact, wisdom was consid- 
 ered to represent a higher stage of religious illumina- 
 tion than the prophetic vision. (Midra^h Ekha Pabba: 
 Sabbath 119, b.) 
 
 In accordance with Biblical precedent Moses is as- 
 
 19 
 
signed au exceptional station among the prophets by 
 the rabbis. And yet when we analyze their views on the 
 channels through which Moses received tlie revealing 
 message, we cannot but conclude tliat they inclined very 
 stroiigly to the opinion that liis own mind was the con- 
 stituting and determinating factor of the revelation of 
 wliich he was the mouth-piece. ' (Maimonides, Yesodhe 
 Hattorah Yli, G; Ibn Esra to N'um. VII; Siphri to 
 Lev. 1,1). 
 
 As Judaism never accepted Tertullian's credible est 
 quia ineptum est, the miracle of revelation even cannot 
 be elevated to a plane higher than that to be assigned to 
 otliCTS. Truth is truth no matter how enunciated, when 
 and wliere and by whom. Twice two equals four, no 
 divine voice can change the result or lend additional 
 verity to the statement. That the square erected on the 
 hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of 
 squares of the other two sides remains true without rev- 
 elation and cannot be vitialed by never so solemn a 
 divine ]n'oclanmtion of the contrary. 
 
 I>ight is right under all circumstances, and if man is 
 unable to distinguish between right and wrong without 
 revelation he will be as incompetent after its interven- 
 tion. For the human mind can only act upon motives 
 which lie within the sphere of its own cognition. Such 
 motives and the standards by which to judge them the 
 human mind can either always grasp of its own 
 strength, or it cannot grasp them at all, and in this 
 case not act upon them. Kor can God be proven by 
 revelation. Either the God-idea lies within the range 
 of the human mind's possibilities,. and then revelation is 
 unnecessarv, or it does not, and then revelation will not 
 bring us one inch nearer to ifs comprehension so as to 
 make it a vital force in our life and thought. 
 
 20 
 
Moreover^ if miracles prove truth, every form of re- 
 ligion is by virtue of such corroboration entitled to ()e 
 held true. For every religion claims by its documents, 
 or in the belief of its devotees, to be of divine origin. 
 Of every religious teacher the working of miracles is 
 recorded. And these are as well authenticated as are 
 those of which the* Bible has the record, Moses and 
 Jesus, Mohammed and Buddah, not to mention others, 
 are credited with the performance of identical opera- 
 tions. To say that those remembered of Moses are 
 more trustworthy than others is not admissible. For 
 recent literary researches in the history of religious 
 tradition have established beyond the possibility of cavil 
 the fact that none of the Old Testament historical books 
 are the children of the times of which they purport to 
 give us a detailed account. Even if we would agree to 
 the proposition of Maimonides that the miracles 
 wrought by Moses are in so far more credible than those 
 of the prophets after him, since they were performed in 
 the plain sight of eye-witnesses, we, should have to re- 
 linquish the argument in view of the indisputable cir- 
 cumstance that none of our documents is contemporane- 
 ous with the men supposed to have been eye-witnesses. 
 
 Judaism as a religion has no concern with the efforts 
 to save as authentic the Biblical stories. We may 
 without fear of endangering the foundations of our 
 faith subject the old documents, children of religion 
 and not its parents, as as they are, to the processes of 
 analysis which furnish us an insight into the architec- 
 ture and character of the Homeric poems or the Vedic 
 hymns or the composition of. the Koran. Tinder the 
 lens of the critic, miracle will appear to belong to the 
 region of myth. 
 
 21 
 
S;)y.s Dr. Eiiiliorn, ''The miracles which the Biblical 
 books describe as far as tliey are not memories of nat- 
 ural occurrences belong to tlie territory of legend. (Ner 
 ■ Tamid, \). 37.)" Myth, said Plegel, is of all true state- 
 ments 0/ truth tlic truest. If it docs not tell us what 
 has happened, it informs us what should have hap- 
 pened, if certain princi[)les are the detenninants of the 
 univ.erse. With but slight modification we may admit 
 this dictum of tlie bold German dialectician. Indeed, 
 they are strangers even in the anti-chaml)er of the hu- 
 man souFs workshop who believe that myth and untruth 
 are exchangeable terms. No myth is a free invention 
 unless it be of that class of myths which are called 
 secondary. Whenever a myth is the original outburst of 
 a people's thought, it is the irresistible utterance of the 
 people's p^oetic apperception of the events which it esti- 
 m.ates to be of vital import in iTs own destiny; when it 
 recites the story of a personal life, as often it does, it 
 is the reflection of the people's Highest ambitions, or the 
 reconstruction of its own life in the form of an indi- 
 vidual trial or triumph. 
 
 The myths or miracles in tlie New Testament are 
 indeed, to a great extent, secondary or derivative. That 
 Elijah and Moses are virtually one and the same per- 
 sonal precipitate of the nation's reconstructive poetry, 
 of the nation's constructive period, the Talmudists have 
 already detected. They enumerate nearly one hundred 
 similarities of event and performance in the recorded 
 biographies of these two pioneer prophets. And, in- 
 deed, both figures are the Incarnation of the struggles 
 which the nation underwent in its slow advance from 
 tribal henotheism and Canaanitish polytheism to a more 
 refined and ethical YahAvism. €!armel and Sinai are 
 both the local background and the foci of that contest. 
 
 22 
 
Xo AYonder, then, that the miracles told of one in some 
 form or another are woven info the life of the other. 
 In the biography of these two men we are confronted 
 with the spontaneous production of the mythopoetic 
 creative faculty of the nation. It is the people, inquir- 
 ing into it^ own history and destiny, that presides at 
 the loom on which the miraculous . thread and web is 
 spuii. Xot so in the gospels. Here the artificiality ol; 
 the method is at once apparent. The purpose to consti- 
 tute the Xazarene the greater Moses and Elijah is 
 patent. Every miracle wrought by Amram's son is 
 also performed by Mary's child, but always in a height- 
 ened degree. 
 
 Leaving to one side these secondary miracles or myths 
 we shall 'find in tlie Old Testament representatives of 
 every variety of myth that we have discovered in our 
 study of non-Biblical folk-poetry or literature. Let us 
 not he afraid of placing our Bible into this company 
 where to be is its hy right of similarity of origin and 
 method of composition and compilation. The Bible is 
 literature, the literature of a highly gifted people; 
 literature covering a millenium reflecting the various 
 moods of the national soul and preserving the succes- 
 sive stages of its sponsors' development and growth into 
 the realization of their national dower and destiny. As 
 such literature of an ancient people the Bible cannot be 
 expected to be the text-hook of geology or astronomy 
 or to have anticipated the discoveries in our physical 
 or physiological laboratories. It is not even a manual 
 of historv' ; for the ancient nations did not write history 
 as we do. But as such literature it has a value which 
 no other estimate of its character can confer upon it. 
 The soul of its parent-people glows in every line thereof. 
 From that soul was mined the gold of the passion for 
 
 9f> 
 
righteousness which is tlio Leitmotif of iU mature mes- 
 sage to the work!, a message which has aroused the zones 
 to joyful echo and is toda}', as it was of old, the tonic 
 chord in tlic faitli of humanity's hest and purest. 
 
 If this literature frames myths which as records of 
 actual events we shall not accept, its value is thereby 
 not impaired. Its very myths breathe the spirit which 
 has enkindled with life its every note. 
 
 Of nature-myths we find but a limited number in this 
 literature. The book of Job and one or the other psalm 
 show traces of their currency among the Hebrews. But 
 we have a .soodly representation of what is denoted as 
 culture-mytlis. The change from the civilization of 
 the hunter to the superior conditions of the Nomad's 
 pursuits is enclosed in the relation between Essau, the 
 starving huntersman, and Jacob, the shepherd, who is 
 well warded against hunger. The transformation of 
 the shepherd into a farmer, successful only after re- 
 peated abortive efforts comes to light in the story of 
 Abel's murder at the hands of Cain. Tribal qualities 
 and antipathies liave also informed many an incident. 
 Is not Jacob the typical shrewd Semitic shepherd? And 
 is not Abraham the incarnation of another and nobler 
 type still now found in the black tents of the Bedouin? 
 The migrations of the patriarchs are personified move- 
 ments of clans. They are credited with erecting altars 
 which enjoyed high repute among the people even in 
 days when the stricter Yahwism of later development 
 would question the legitimacy of these ancient shrines. 
 Moab and Amnion, arch-enemies of the sons of Israel, 
 are charged by tribal myth with incestuous origin. 
 Now it is a name that no longer understood gives rise 
 to a story; anon it is a verse of some ditty or rhyme 
 
 24 
 
come down the ages that evokes the explanatory event. 
 Samson's life teems with incidents of this kind. 
 
 A festival which has gro^Ti up naturally and has in 
 its development from a pastoral feast into a day appeal- 
 ing through a changed ritual to an agricultural people, 
 kept. pace with the evolution of the nation's culture 
 would be connected with an important and decisive 
 crisis in the history of the clans. And spontaneously 
 the mythopoetic faculty responds to the impulse. Ad- 
 vancins: civilization does not blur the memory of the 
 ruder habits and rites of former days, a strange cus- 
 tom or festal song has, perhaps, served to fix the former 
 practice in the economy of certain localities. What 
 may have been the provoking event? Jephta's daugh- 
 ter's fate illustrates in its composite character of the 
 therewith associated story this class of myths. It 
 would account for a rh^mie and a festival dear to thei 
 maidens of the district and in so doing fossilizes the old 
 rite of human sacrifice and even weaves into the many- 
 threaded nattern of its tradition one of the wanderins: 
 legends, the Hebrew counterpart to the Greek of Iphi- 
 genia. And is Samson not also of this order, the He- 
 brew Hercules, the sun-hero? Does not proverb and 
 rhyme and name furnish the irritant for the free ac- 
 tivity of the myth-weaving fancy in stories illustrative 
 of the life and the labors of the forebears? Locality is 
 also a fertile source. The bleak and desolate region of 
 the "Dead Sea challenges the harmonizing propensities 
 of folk-fancy. 
 
 Every nation unrlei" GocVr snn has so accounted for 
 desolate wastes. Let no one reck them recollections of 
 great geolodcal cataclysms. Yiueta is the Baltic ver- 
 sion of Sodom and Gomorrha. This fancv is free of 
 the burden of complying with nature's rigid inflexi- 
 
 25 
 
l)ilit\-. When it was in its prime and therefore most 
 lirochictivo, it looked upon nature as a congeries of per- 
 sonal volitions, unhampered by such laws as we have de- 
 tected to liold stars and stones and rocks and rivers un- 
 der impartial dominion. Animals speak, and why 
 sliould tlicy not? A generation but little removed from 
 tlie influences of the Totem age could not feel the difh- 
 eultics therein involved. The medicinal value of ii 
 hniss serpent, the curative effect of representative gold 
 mice and bubos are precipitates of the Totem age and 
 the reflection of its convictions. Fairy tales also have 
 deputies in this congress of myths. Elisha's bear de- 
 vouring tlie mocking cliildren is of one of these. That 
 myth is often faithful to local coloring, as for instance 
 in the description of the Egyptian plagues, need not as- 
 tonish us. Poetry mixes its colors very frequently m 
 accordance with the pattern which nature furnishes. 
 He who wrote the epos of the Exodus or reduced it to 
 written form was not ignorant of Egypt's circum- 
 stances. His systematic disquisition, however, bears the 
 earmarks of having been worked out in the solitude of 
 his study, his intention is clearly to controvert the theo- 
 logy of the Pharaoh's; he gives us neither history nor 
 mythology, but theology. 
 
 But I must hasten to the conclusion. One word has 
 to be said which often is neglected. Underneath this 
 mythology of the Bible pulsates still another force. The 
 Midrasldr method lias inspirited the Bible. Originally 
 the spontaneous outpouring of unconcerned national 
 reminiscences and ambitions, the literature of Israel 
 passed at a later epoch tlirough a reconstructive pro- 
 cess. In this W'ay its contents were enriched with the 
 added significance of being witnesses to the universal 
 reign of those principles of righteousness which con- 
 
 26 
 
stitute the burden of Israel's message to the ages. Al- 
 most every life and every story was re-adjusted to the 
 demands of this higher outlook. Israel had become at 
 last the people of priests, the one nation reading its na- 
 tional duty in terms of service to the one God, a service 
 which demanded obedience and love, not sacrifices. The 
 Bible was heis^htened from literature into the book of 
 religious instruction. 
 
 Every stage of the nation's growth into and toward 
 the light had left its imprint upon the manner and 
 matter of popular tradition. This final climax recast 
 the material once more. And the later Midrash fol- 
 lowed in the footsteps of the Biblical Midrash. How 
 beautifully, for instance, is the story of Israel's wander- 
 ing in the desert applied in the homilies of the rabbis. 
 The story of the divine protection and guidance by a 
 pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day, is undoubtedly 
 the offspring of the method employed by the tramping 
 tribes to beacon the direction to the long drawn column, 
 ^lodern writers on the marching arrangements of the 
 pilgrim lines on their way to ]\[ecca have recalled the 
 Biblical scene. The Mannah, too, has for its basis the 
 occurrence of a resinous shrub in the peninsula and the 
 burning bush of Moses holds for its nucleus of fact the 
 existence of another shrub native to those regions. But 
 both Bible and Midrash have done better than to dwell 
 upon these germs and to point to them in proof of the 
 veracity of their records. They have made the miracle 
 the vehicle of moral instruction, a new and nobler 
 poetry built on the old. 
 
 The prose of the camp-lights, or the moving cloud of 
 dust, or of the secretions of a tree, or the fiery blossoms 
 of a shrub or the roar of the volcano, ancient seat and 
 center of tribal worsliip, has been transformed into th;.- 
 
 27 
 
])cal of God's ovm voice, into lessons of divine guidance 
 and human trust which are true forever. This truth 
 we cherish. It needs no confirmation by miracles, it is 
 its own recorded witness, its own prophet and revelation. 
 The pages of the unfolding centuries are a scroll con- 
 tinuous, each line of which echoes the one thought of 
 everv miracle turned into a Midrash: — God reigneth, 
 his dominion embraces all the worlds and is without 
 end. This faith will not parent miracles. It had 
 found its voice l^efore Sinai was believed to have thun- 
 dered and should Sinai cease to be awful as the theater 
 of theophanies it would still ring on. 
 
 Myth or miracle for this confidence in the essential 
 righteousness of the universe and the duty of mlan to 
 strive after righteousness are indifferent alternatives. 
 Before the forum of literature and scholarship miracle 
 belongs to the realm of myth but religion, our religion 
 spurns tl e crutches of a more limited assurance, it re- 
 je ts tlie belief in miracles not because it would have 
 less of God, no, because it has more of him. God's law 
 is not in heaven, it is not beyond the sea, but in our 
 mouth and our heart to do it. 
 
The Place of the Individual in 
 Organized Charity. 
 
 This house has often received distinction by the pres- 
 ence of men and women come together under the 
 sacred impulse for earnest words and work. Rarely, 
 however, has a gathering claimed the hospitality and 
 inspiration of this Temple which we knew to have a 
 stronger claim u^^on our recognition and sympathy 
 than your conference. The fact that busy men and much 
 engaged women will leave their desks or lay aside other 
 duties and will pilgrim in these days of summer discom- 
 fort to a city not their own for the purpose of bringing 
 and receiving counsel and exchanging experiences bear- 
 ing on the improvement and enlargement of methods 
 and means in philanthropic endeavors, is in itself an 
 omen of good results and augurs well for the spirit dom- 
 inant among those that guard the interests of Judaism 
 and its professors in our beloved country. Like you, so 
 have the members of Sinai Congregation no anxiety 
 more pressing than through religion to learn how to 
 vitalize theory into practice. The subjects which your 
 papers discussed with such breadth of solicitude and 
 depth of intelligence have at other times not been ex- 
 cluded from the privileges of this pulpit. Years ago, 
 indeed, this congregation shared with many of her sis- 
 ters, the prejudice that religion stood in no relation to 
 
the eflforts aiming at the amelioration of social condi- 
 tions. Today there is no member, I dare say, who knows 
 of Sinai's convictions but understands that the social 
 ^perplexities troubling our generation are fundament- 
 ally religious problems. They vibrate with the appeals, 
 the regrets and the remorses of an aroused social con- 
 science and it was this conscience which the prophets 
 of old stepped forth to awaken from lethargy and irre- 
 sponsiveness fostered under an idolatry to false gods 
 and ideals. Judaism certainly has among its sanctities 
 none that may outvalue its insistence upon man's call 
 to be his fellowman's keeper. 
 
 Nevertheless, though an humble teacher of this pro- 
 phetic Judaism, I should never of my own free choice 
 have presumed to address you, the officers and dele- 
 gates of this conference, had your own generous invita- 
 tion not conferred upon me the precious prerogative of 
 craving an audience for my faltering words. Experts 
 alone should demand a hearing in an assembly of this 
 order. Certain it is none other is justified to pretend to 
 the censor's and the critic's part. Perhaps the consid- 
 eration that I have had the advantages of a modern 
 theological schooling in which sociology is almost focal, 
 has emboldened those who arranged your suggestive 
 program to venture upon the always risky experiment 
 of assigning me a place among the designated speakers. 
 Conscious of the obligations which this confidence en- 
 tails, I am encouraged to repress all timidity by the 
 reflection that in this city, if nowhere else, congrega- 
 tions have been forced to lay aside the altogether too 
 
common prejudice which will hold the rabbi, through 
 the infection of his profession, to be always w^oefully 
 lacking in common sense and always deficient in those 
 capabilities which enable one to grasp propositions and 
 convictions with a view to their practicability. If this 
 prevalent misconception of rabbinical, congenital or ac- 
 quired obliquity were supported by reality, no preacher's 
 voice should be raised in a gathering asking for light on 
 such grave matters as have been under discussion this 
 day. For they are by no means theoretical subtilities. 
 Beyond what academic attraction they own, they have 
 an incisive connection with hard and stubborn practice. 
 But then modern theology, too, has been impressed 
 with the solemnities of the practical things. The poles 
 at w^hich its spark leaps out are not in the misty be- 
 yond, but in the impressive now and pushing here. 
 Thus it has always been in .Judaism. Our religion 
 never recognized the divorcement of practice from 
 theory, of the secular relations and responsibilities from 
 the sacred Our theology has always been sociological 
 in intent and practical in purpose. The modern theo- 
 logian who has come to understand the true aspects of 
 his profession and has earnestly striven to prepare him- 
 self for its responsibilities does therefore not a iwiori 
 fall under the ban which excludes amateurs, be their 
 intentions never so noble, from the field. 
 
 The day for amateurs is past. In all the varied hu- 
 man activities, the call is for experts. Life has become 
 so intense in all of its departments and so dreadfully in 
 earnest in all of its conflicts and conditions that only 
 
one guided by expert knowledge and fortified by deli- 
 cately tempered elasticity of ex})erimental wisdom, may 
 hope to be of use to himself and to others. 
 
 Expert knowledge is by its very nature restricted, 
 departmental knowledge. Specialisation is therefore 
 the characteristic bent and necessity of our age. En- 
 cyclopedic and ecumenical science is denied us even in 
 the one branch of human activities to which we have 
 wedded our destiny and pledged our duty. A few de- 
 cades ago every good physician could with good con- 
 science give advice on every ailment that presented its 
 horrors or tortures to his well-disciplined eye. Now, 
 one who would pretend to such universal information 
 would forfeit the confidence of his patrons. The di- 
 ploma may still name him Doctor of universal medi- 
 cal science; but in stern and sober reality only a few 
 counties of a small province of medicine's wide domain 
 are absolutely and scientifically familiar to his trained 
 and expert mind. And the same is true in all other 
 w^alks of life. Encyclopedic knowledge and ability are 
 today onl}^ the property of high-school graduates and 
 even they learn to modify their estimate a few weeks 
 after the close of their school quadriennium. Business 
 illustrates this phenomenon as strongly as ever do the 
 liberal professions. Everything is departmentalized 
 and specialized. On all sides we are confronted with 
 division of labor carried to its furthest point and a cor- 
 responding restriction in freedom and breadth of scope. 
 This in turn has led to a stronger organization of the 
 vital forces, with a view to correcting the one-sidedness 
 
incidental to specialisation and broadening again in the 
 results the current of life dammed back and dyked in 
 the initiatory flow and carrying force. Interdependence 
 and association play a part in the economy of human 
 life in a degree and intensity as never before. The 
 whole world of commerce, industry and thought and 
 aspiration is under its spell. Books of exceedingly 
 great importance to scholar and investigator have ceased 
 to be written by one or the other of earth's greatest. 
 Those that today demand the hospitality of our libraries' 
 shelves and admittance to the sanctum of the studious 
 searcher and thinker, are the children of many parents 
 co-operating, each bringing his own specialised science 
 to the common altar. The department store with its 
 possibilities of evil and its power for good has its coun- 
 terpart in the co-operative expeditions and researches 
 for which nations even are asked to stand sponsors. 
 
 Association in philanthropy, now the shibboleth 
 under all skies, is under the same law and is expressive 
 of the same prevalent tendency and recognized neces- 
 sit^^ Division of effort, if uncorrected, leads to waste 
 of energy and increase of ineffectiv-e outlay. Its anti- 
 dote is offered in the comprehensive scheme of co-oi^era- 
 tion and association. 
 
 The evil of specialisation and the loss which is inci- 
 dental to it, which is in fact the price which we pay for 
 increased effectiveness in doing a very small thing but 
 doing it profoundly well, have furnished pretext for 
 many a highly impassioned protest. Becoming this or 
 that, and then even this or that only partially, men 
 
] 
 
 have shrunk from the whole which erst was their meas- 
 ure. Totality is denied specialised men. Under this 
 denial their moral nature suffers. Into a part and 
 fragment men cannot throw their whole soul. This is 
 "he burning indictment written by prophets and articu- 
 lated by prophetic passion and impatience against our 
 modern systems. They denounce them as man-des- 
 troyers. And they are in the right. This is the burden 
 of Ruskin's bitter expostulation with our factory-enslaved 
 V , and factory- made society. He laments, with facts to 
 v.\ comment most pointedly his regrets, the death of the 
 artist who in his supreme and sublime independent 
 creative activities produced always a whole something^ 
 Nr\ which as a whole could not but partake of the beauties 
 of cosmic creation; his ire is stirred and his irony 
 aroused by the sight of the slave doomed to monotonous 
 tricks in the making of something of which he only sees 
 a part and a 23art at that the relation of which to the 
 ultimate whole he cannot anticipate by divination nor 
 figure to himself by retrospective imagination. 
 
 Similarly, though with less justification, have voices 
 in angry resentment been raised to denounce and ex- 
 pose the debasing eff'ects of the new philanthropy. Or- 
 ganized charity, many have contended, is a misnomer. 
 In its name the very flowers w^hich awoke under the 
 touch of the angels of sentiment and sympathy while 
 men and women did, to use the colloquial phrase, "their 
 own charity," are now plucked up by their roots. Cold 
 and often cynic pedantry wearsthecrown which by rights 
 belongs to warm hearted and tender compassion. What- 
 
ever imperfection may have clung to the old method, it 
 had redeeming virtues which in the new are utterly 
 absent. Man met his brother man. The hand of the 
 petitioner grasped that of the helper. Eye looked into 
 eye and heart beat in response to heart. No screen of 
 official formality sejDarated the sufferer from him who 
 had the power and the desire to ease it. Xo deputy 
 whose real impulse is the greed for office or the need of 
 a comfortable berth and the feathering of his own nest, 
 acted as the go-between. If there were the difficulties 
 and possibilities of error always besetting personal re- 
 lations, there were also the rewards and incentives which 
 never fail to tell through personal contact and personal 
 interest. Gratitude is eliminated from the new ecjua- 
 tion and the joy of giving has been chilled by the sub- 
 scription blank. The whole matter has been reduced 
 to figures and columns of figures, speaking of classes 
 and categories into which human folly and human suf- 
 fering and human tears and human despair are pigeon- 
 holed. The modern scheme culminates in administra- 
 tion by proxy and therefore the very soul is taken out 
 of benevolence, for proxy is incompatible with genuine 
 sympathy and where this sweet perfume is rejected, 
 cold mechanical routine soon completes the asphyxia- 
 tion of the warmer and nobler impulses. 
 
 In these and similar counts runs the indictment. 
 Were the charge well substantiated few there would be 
 to stand up and defend the unmitigated fraud or say 
 one word in extenuation of the shameless pretender to 
 distinctions legitimately belonging to another dynasty. 
 
We should all make haste to return to the better ways 
 of olden days, when pity was deep and benevolence 
 was directly resjionsive to the call of weakness and 
 blindness. And none would have the more urgent 
 duty to protest than he who from the prophet's watch- 
 tower must proclaim the woe to them that name sweet 
 sour and sour sweet and parade death in the garment of 
 life. But is there no third possibility? Is the alterna- 
 tive rightly pointed between the slipshod but impulsive 
 ways of former schemes and the systematic but frigid 
 devices of the new school? Must we forfeit the personal 
 factor and force and all that it implies when we would 
 apply in the domain of philanthropy the principles 
 operative in all other fields of activity, viz., specialisation 
 under the law of division of labor and assignment of 
 function and its corrective and corelative, organization^ 
 strenuous and systematic and of wide reach? 
 
 A deeper analj^sis of the aims and expedients of or- 
 ganized charity as understood by expert science will re- 
 veal that contrary to this accusation, which declares 
 organization to sound the death-knell of all vital and per- 
 sonal attributes and achievements in the household of 
 altruism, the new system calls for more strenuous asser- 
 tion and more insistent consideration of the personal 
 equation than did the old. It opens opportunities for 
 personal work and redemption which at its best the old 
 never suspected. The new has indeed no patience witli 
 mere gush and sentimental spasms. But let us be can- 
 did; did not in most cases the much-lauded charity of 
 the heart cloak underneath its wdde folds the barest and 
 
 10 
 
most disgusting selfishness? The motive underlying 
 the ostentatious act was always anxiety to win respect 
 and respectability. And in the other instances when 
 this was not the prompting reason, the gift was expres- 
 sive of a selfish solicitude to escape from one's own 
 conscience. Charity was degraded into an expedient to 
 bribe providential Xemesis into connivance. The doles 
 and driblets falling into the dirty clutches of the beggar 
 were expected to purchase for the donor a crown in 
 heaven. Even in the still more restricted number of 
 acts in which this speculative element was not dynamic, 
 acts generally performed by hysterical or thoughtless 
 women, it is plain to the psychologist that the impul- 
 sive andif 3^ou so will spontaneous benevolence of former 
 days, even at its best and noblest, did not aim at the 
 relief of the donee so much as at that of the donor. 
 The benevolent would have the right to admire her- 
 self a noble woman. The well known charity fiend, a 
 very pest and plague always, is of this order the most 
 striking specimen. Her busy determination to help 
 the poor is to her a source almost of carnal pleasure. 
 She must have ^'her poor" to satisfy her own appetite for 
 self-adulation. This sort of charity is like the craving 
 which possesses the opium eater. Let us be glad that 
 organized charity has limited the field of the charity 
 fiend, Let us even so rejoice that it stands between the 
 impulsively and sentimentally benevolent and their own 
 defenseless self. This indulgence in the voluptuous 
 sensations of helpfulness to others, like every other un- 
 healthy pandering to excessive or illegitimate appetites. 
 
 11 
 
iinist in the long run weaken the whole organism. 
 Whatever the new scheme may have wrought in other 
 regards, having reduced sentimentalism to a minimum 
 and unmasked the egotism of the usurpers that would 
 parade in the purple of queen charity, it has certainly 
 been of mighty benefit to the classes whose privilege it 
 is to give and in so far it has earned its title to grateful 
 recognition on the part of all who would have us be 
 stronger men and truer women. 
 
 Indeed they are strangers in the outer-courts, let alone 
 in the holy of holies, of modern philanthropy's sanc- 
 tuary who have not learned to know that according to 
 the decalogue there enwalled,the collection of money is 
 the least of its anxieties. Among its promises there is 
 no laurel wreath for the rich man who gives only his 
 money. Contributions in the coin of the realm is the 
 smallest service and the easiest which is demanded. 
 The collection of the funds required is of course an in- 
 dispensable function. But money is after all in the 
 conception of the new science of social hygiene, which 
 is only another phrase for modern philanthropy, 
 merely what the lubricating oil is to the engine. It 
 cannot be spared, but he who handles the can must have 
 a care not to get his fingers soiled. Nabob who sub- 
 scribes readily or under pressure no matter how great 
 a sum, but who will not give what is nobler and more 
 essential provided he own it, himself, has not yet been 
 touched by the new conviction of the better minded and 
 more purely souled who, having no money or little to 
 give, give themselves to their brother. Let hired panegy- 
 
 12 
 
rist at the bier sing the praises of defunct mere million- 
 aire in never so many keys if he be proclaimed a truly 
 generous man, cassocked preacher or fashionable rabbi 
 though the hawker of these common religio-social 
 polite deviations from truth be, the truer estimate of the 
 deceased money-maker's life's worth will be in the ver- 
 dict that having no self to give to others he occupied 
 only a very small jDlace in the moral economy of the 
 fraternity of man. Humanities cannot be exj^ressed in 
 terms of the bank account. And as the prime solicitude 
 of philanthropy is for a nobler, truer humanity, money 
 cannot be the primary or ultimate equivalent of its im- 
 plications. 
 
 But how so does the modern philanthropy, organized 
 as it is and must be, offer opportunity for the devotion 
 and cultivation of this which is more vital than dollars? 
 Few are the places on the administrative boards and 
 executive committees. Are all others excluded from 
 the blessings which the priestly ministry at the altar 
 earns and dispenses? Indeed not. Regiments of thou- 
 sands of workers the new philanthropy would enroll. 
 Brigades of volunteers are needed to carry out to the 
 full its program of social redemption. This army 
 "whose duty it is to save" has rank and brevet for both 
 the young and the old, the learned and the illiterate, 
 the rich and the modestly-pursed. Organized charity 
 reads through the eyes of the friendly visitor. It 
 mobilizes the sympathy of the college settlement resi- 
 dent and sends out its sisterhoods of love. This is the 
 Paradise of personal service which the new charity 
 
 13 
 
recognizes. It is not true that because we have eaten of 
 the tree of the new knowledge we have been expelled 
 from this Eden and are now denied access to the old 
 tree of life. The new charity is a cherub, welcoming 
 all who ask for admission at the threshold of the home 
 of peace. Its is not the flaming sword keeping at a 
 distance the weary pilgrim. Its is the palm beckon- 
 ing him to approach and enter. The friendly visitor, 
 the resident and the sister wall glean all the spiritual 
 ecstacies and enjoy all the pleasures of personal con- 
 tact which we have heard so often extolled as the com- 
 pensations of the former personal system. But they 
 will do this in saner measure than was possible of old. 
 Their own manhood and womanhood will grow be- 
 cause their brother's or sister's whose friend they Avould 
 be, grows also. They give while receiving blessings and 
 the recipients of their confidences give as much to them 
 as they bestow upon them. This reciprocity of in- 
 creased humanity the old method could not actualise. 
 Gratitude in the new is not one-sided. It leaps into 
 flash at both poles of the circuit. 
 
 If, on the one hand, false inferences have been accen- 
 tuated as to the ultimate impoverishment of the stores 
 of sympathy and love which man up to this age of sys- 
 tem idolatry and organizing monomania could readily 
 replenish, on the other, wdth like want of judgment, 
 false expectations have been raised and encouraged as 
 the promise of the new methods. The ferment of the 
 old leaven of egotism has not been neutralized entirely 
 by the alkali of altruism believed to dominate the sons 
 
 14 
 
of our generation or the sons of Israel's covenant. 
 Many have hailed the new order of things in our chari- 
 ties and have lent it support and countenance because 
 they anticipated to get immediate release from obliga- 
 tions which are essentially of a private nature. But 
 organized charity never was meant to shield the strong 
 and capable, the rich and affluent, or even those in 
 modest comfort against duties which family and friend- 
 ship or association in business or profession impose. 
 These relations are elemental. They persist in spite of 
 all concentration of effort and combination of resources. 
 The brother primarily remains the ward of his brother. 
 And the friend retains, first and last, his sacred claim 
 and right to the help of his friend. Through the varied 
 ramifications and within the extensive range of these 
 interdependences and natural and moral affinities, even 
 under the most exhaustive application of the schemes 
 of organized charities, there will always be ample room 
 for the assertion and activity of private interest and in- 
 tense personal sympathy. It is also a mistake to sup- 
 pose that organized charities are intended to cover the 
 whole field of altruistic effort. The little mountain 
 brooks continue their descent from the heights though 
 their waters combine in thelow -lands to flood the deeper 
 current of the rivers. On their way to their destiny 
 the silvery w^avelets kiss into fragrance and call into 
 flowered charms the rocky borders of their sloping 
 bed. As we are members of human society our altru- 
 ism merges with kindred impulse stirring our fellows, 
 in a broad stream sweeping before the eyes of all on to 
 
 15 
 
the waiting ocean. But while we are tending to this 
 common goal man\^ a thought and consideration conse- 
 crated to and centered in the welfare of one or the other 
 individual must and may shape itself into deed of which 
 no record is kept, save in the great ledger in which God 
 himself makes the entries. The detection of genius or 
 talent frittering its soul away in the drudgery of menial 
 work when natal endowment cries out for the oi)portu- 
 nity and freedom to prepare for the ministry of the arts 
 or the priesthood of the sciences, is still incumbent up- 
 on individual magnanimity. Little reflection suffices 
 to expose the groundlessness of the apprehension that 
 under the new system there is no place for individual 
 effort with its attending rewards and increment of 
 moral force, as well as the utter baseness of the plea 
 that organized charity shall relieve its contributors 
 from obligations which blood and spirit have woven 
 and continue to impress. 
 
 In our fetich-worship of institutionalism, however, 
 we deprive ourselves of natural and abundantly 
 proffered opportunity for individual synipathy and per- 
 sonal interest. This idolatry of institutionalism 
 arises from the mistaken notion that the problems of 
 philanthropy are exclusively economic. Were they 
 this the conclusion would be inavoidable and incontro- 
 vertible that the economically cheapest plan is always 
 the best and therefore under all circumstances the one 
 to be adopted and pushed to its consistent end. Under 
 the additional pressure of parsimoniously provided 
 means and the constant prospect of a deficit, small is the 
 
 16 
 
wonder that he who entertains the opmion that institu- 
 tionalism is not sanctioned by the demands of better 
 and broader science preaches to deaf ears and if he per- 
 sists runs the risk of personal disfavor justly visited up- 
 on a pestiferous crank or worse. The paucity of re- 
 sources is always a potent argument. Its well-nigh 
 universal and painfully palpable presence may be ad- 
 mitted. But is there no possibility of sparing the minds 
 of those who would look after the welfare of our depend- 
 ent orphans and old people, the fright from this gaunt 
 spectre and thus to predispose them into greater readi- 
 ness to accord an audience to the advocate of a different 
 scheme? I hold that there is. The collection of con- 
 tributions is a department which should rigidly be di- 
 vorced from the distributions of the funds or their ap- 
 plication and expenditure. Because this principle has 
 not been sufficiently well respected our efforts have 
 more or less been hampered and the prime discrimina- 
 tion which the anxious stewards of our various benevo- 
 lences were compelled to carry in mind was naturally 
 the cheapness or expensiveness of the devices proposed. 
 At last, we in Chicago as before us our friends in Cin- 
 cinnati, have resolved to separate the two distinct social 
 operations, the collection of funds from their appropria- 
 tion. As the new division will prove its wisdom by the 
 results, even now foreshadowed in the experience of our 
 community, its friends will multiply and the revenues 
 will augment. 
 
 Institutionalism with its prime recommendation of 
 cheapness will in consequence lose its pre-eminence in 
 
 17 
 
the exclusive favor of the well intending but naturally in- 
 dolent public, l^ecause instituti< )nalism has been our sole 
 refuge, it has not earned an unclouded title to continu- 
 ance. It is now ramparted behind the natural inertia, 
 tlie disinclination of groups of men and minds to make 
 a change. It is dyked, as already indicated, by the 
 figures of the financial secretary's reports. I, for one, 
 cannot but feel a twinge of conscience that somehow or 
 other I, as one of the men of the pulpit, have failed to 
 do my full duty when listening to the congratulations 
 loudly emphasized at our annual meetings because we 
 have succeeded in reducing the annual cost per capita 
 to one hundred and five dollars in the maintenance of 
 our homes and as3'lums. I am willing to suppress my 
 suspicion that these figures have been doctored by the 
 failure to include the original investment in buildings 
 and grounds and equipments, interest on which certainly 
 is a charge legitimately to be booked in the balance 
 sheet. My grief arises from deeper sources. In order 
 to reduce the cost per capita we have had to increase the 
 number of inmates. And increase of numbers herded 
 together under one root', to my understanding, is not a 
 provocation to felicitation but a cause for serious alarm. 
 And why? Because philanthropy is not a province of 
 finance but of ethics. Did the moral life follow the line 
 of least resistance there would be no further call for dis- 
 cussing the situation. Institutionalism is certainly the 
 plan which offers the easiest and, we are assured though 
 I doubt this, also the financially cheapest solution. 
 But it is characteristic of the moral life never to flow 
 
 18 
 
like water along the line of the least resistance. The 
 contrary is the case. To be moral, thought and action 
 must often take the line of the greatest resistance. Were 
 man exclusively under the laws which regulate the mo- 
 tions of planets or the development of plants; were mind 
 and mud in one and the same plane or soul and seed 
 under one destiny doubtlessly the search for the least 
 resistence would be prudent philosophy. But man is 
 not exclusively organized matter. His is a moral law 
 and a moral purpose. His humanity lays upon him 
 the painful task to forego ease and meet difficulty that 
 in the overcoming of the obstacle he may find his own 
 moral health and happiness. Israel has never followed 
 the line of the least resistance. Its philosophy is the 
 accentuation of the contrary proposition from that which 
 advises pursuit of paths of minimized effort. Let us 
 under the noble consecration to do good to our fellow- 
 men which is now upon us in a degree formerly not 
 attained, remember that this philosophy of our religion 
 must also enter into every branch of our work. We 
 must wean ourselves of the fatal conceit that economic 
 cheapness or moral easiness is the decisive factor and 
 sole consideration. We are asked to reinstate the indi- 
 vidual in his rights to personal sympathy and personal 
 activity and interest. In restricting our institutions to 
 the absolutely needful and maintaining them merely as 
 sheltering houses for the limited time which must elapse 
 before homes can be found for child or veteran, we 
 shall open a way for the exercise and fruition of indi- 
 vidual interest in a degree unattained by our immediate 
 
 19 
 
predecessors. In saying this, far is from my mind the 
 intention of framing one phrase which might be heavy 
 with the bitterness of criticism of the spirit manifested 
 in the government of our Jewish institutions. As in- 
 stitutions they challenge the admiration of the world. 
 They have no superiors. And among our neighbors 
 few are found to be on as high a level. Fortunately, 
 we Jews have received from our past of suffering a 
 legacy which proved an invulnerable armor and 
 shield against many of the vicious tendencies operative 
 in the institutional charities of the non-Jews. We are 
 not very apt to brutalize and terrorize and demoralize 
 the wards entrusted to our keeping, be they tender 
 orphans or tired veterans. 
 
 But for how long will this legacy continue to stand us 
 in similar good stead? Let us not deceive ourselves. 
 Our grand temples, our large congregations with their 
 wonderfully learned and mightily eloquent spiritual 
 leaders have as yet not solved the insistent problem of 
 how^ to re-activize in the generation born in the flush 
 of our new day and under the insidious and distracting 
 pressure of modern materialism, the stirringly sacred 
 memories of a past of bitter suffering and ideal hope- 
 fulness. 
 
 We have not as yet been able to requicken the ex- 
 perience of the fathers into incentives for the sons. 
 Some have perhaps fossilized custom and ceremony 
 and deem the task done by cataloguing lites or ex- 
 hibiting implement in the show-case of a museum. We 
 would have these memories be momentous with force- 
 
 20 
 
ful moral life, mentors and megaphones of calls to men 
 and women of unborn tomorrow. 
 
 And when, as I am afraid will soon come to pass, 
 that source of influence shall have ceased proffering its 
 refreshing draughts, our institutions will fall as inevit- 
 ably under the blight of institutionalism as have the 
 others founded and reared and administered without 
 the restrictive and remedial if subtle antidotes, come to 
 us from our glorious memories of martyrdom. Will 
 then the Jewish community awaken to the necessity of 
 accommodating their philanthropies to the better 
 scheme of individual treatment under organized direc- 
 tion and supervision? 
 
 Economically speaking, it may be true that no child 
 could be reared in a private family at SlOo per annum. 
 But what of it? Physiology teaches us, and psychology 
 presses home the lesson, that organs, if not employed, 
 atrophize. In the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky the 
 fish have no eyes. Having no need for e^^es they never 
 activized the optical nerve and the optical organ. Put 
 a fish into this lightless lake tod a}' and let his offspring 
 swim about in it for one or two generations, his 
 descendants will gradually lose sight and will ultimate- 
 ly accommodate themselves to absolute darkness unlit 
 by star or satellite. 
 
 If we, like those specimens of the finny tribe, will 
 cease utilizing a function of our moral organism, it will 
 die. Takeaway the child from his mother, the child is 
 not the only one to suffer. The mother herself is 
 doomed to greater privation. The mother's maternity 
 
 21 
 
is weakened. Take away the venerable grandfather 
 from the household, put hin:^ into a beautiful hotel, 
 give him all the comforts that bountiful ingenuity can 
 devise, his grand-children, losing his presence, will 
 forfeit an incentive to activize an imp(»rtant function of 
 their moral nature. 
 
 Morally measured, a plan which is under the beset- 
 ing anxiety of regarding the family as focal, sacred and 
 inviolable, is by all odds the better. With every child 
 that comes to the household a new source of blessing 
 opens. The child is the Moses, wielding a God-gifted 
 staff to compel the rock to yield the refreshing and in- 
 vigorating waters of love. Unhappy the mother that 
 has lost her child. Unhappier still the woman that 
 never has .had a child. 
 
 Childlessness was in the Biblical perspective the very 
 culmination of misery. It is the Psalmist's most sig- 
 nificant promise that God will cause the childless 
 woman to inhabit the house with as intense joy as is 
 the mother's who clasps to her bosom her glad sons. 
 
 Were this view-point more earnestly emphasized, 
 would the difficulty appall us? Could for almost every 
 totally orphaned child not a childless woman be found 
 that would be willing to enlarge her own soul by taking 
 into her own home and her affections the fatherless and 
 motherless? The alchemy of that child's love and 
 presence will make her more of a woman and her hus- 
 band more of a man. And the guardian appointed to 
 keep a watchful eye over the child so placed will soon 
 discover a new melody to his life. His ward will grow 
 
 22 
 
into his heart making him the richer, while his care 
 and confidence cannot but help enriching the soul of 
 the orphan. These few suggestions indicate what wide 
 scope the non-institutional scheme promises for in- 
 dividual effort and reward for rich or idle men and 
 women, who now are frittering away their excess of 
 ethical motives to no purpose, and would fain find 
 satisfaction for their yearning to be of use personally to 
 some one whom they could love. 
 
 But would not at the same time the children also be 
 the gainers? There be those that are fanatics of 
 uniforms. Alas! that our steeples should sound the 
 death-knell of the 19th century, while brass buttons 
 again are the coveted possession of every little raga- 
 muffin of the street. Alas! that this 19th century 
 should totter to its burial while uniforms are the aff'ec- 
 tation of every fashionable miss and every foolish 
 matron, and khaki is the latest rage and fad. 
 
 At a time like this to speak against uniforms is blas- 
 phemy, and he who does this is held to be either a 
 crank or an old fogy. 
 
 Is it not an inspiring sight when thousands of orphan 
 children pass by in perfect alignement, every motion 
 in rhythmic swing, every eye in one direction and every 
 nose elevated at the commanded angle? Is it not stirring 
 to hear their band play the martial marches to which 
 the volunteer regiments went forth to battle and stormed 
 the bastioned hills of our enemies? An inspiring sight! 
 Ask the French writers what life in military barracks 
 means? Read the books that have come hot with the 
 
 23 
 
passion of vehement protest from the presses in the 
 French capital last year, and then plead if you dare for 
 the military system of education^ which must unavoid- 
 ably obtain in large institutions. 
 
 I know full well some of our orphan homes have not 
 branded their innocent inmates with the brass button 
 stiojma of public support. But even so, does the child 
 enjoy to the full what is the every child's by God's own 
 law, his or her individuality? Is it possible to conduct 
 a family of 97 children with due respect for the indi- 
 vidual scope and initiative of every child? I deny the 
 possibility. They must eat at the tap of the bell. They 
 must pray at the call of the trumpet. They are in 
 grave danger of being shriveled into automatons. They 
 lose what no one has a right to rob them of, their 
 personality, their personal distinctness and value. And 
 having no outlet and provocation for their filial affec- 
 tion, this function of their moral nature goes to seed. It 
 atrophizes. 
 
 Once in awhile a great man will arise, — and I know^ 
 one such whose name to mention delicacy forbids, — 
 who owns a wonderful genius for love, who knows how 
 to awaken fihal feelings in the hearts of his "little" (?) 
 family of five hundred and more children. 
 
 But have you the assurance that his like will again 
 be found? Blessed the institution which is under his 
 guidance, but all the poorer by comparison are the other 
 institutions that are not in the care of another like him. 
 Men of genius are not made to order. They cannot be 
 commanded by never so liberal a salary and never so 
 
 24 
 
alluring an advertisement in our religious (!) papers. 
 This matter of atrophizing filial affection is by no 
 means of no moment Pedagogues know that when a 
 child is of necessity deprived of the natural outflo^v of 
 his filial sentiments, these will seek another channel. 
 Repressed, they assume volcanic violence. 
 
 Hence, in large boarding-schools, hence in our insti- 
 tutions, certain peculiar— to use no stronger word — and 
 disquieting mental phenomena are always sure to 
 appear, which Kraft-Erbing and other alienists have not 
 been slow to number among the anomalies, and mor- 
 alists among the dreaded immoralities, to which the 
 herding of parentless boys and girls is apt to lead. 
 This anomaly is characterized by the exuberance of 
 attachment for the neighbors in the dormitory, and this 
 unnatural excess of affection for boy on the part of boy 
 leads to— horrors ! This danger is always to be appre- 
 hended when the child's natural right to love mother, 
 father, or one that takes their place, is unnaturally 
 denied him. 
 
 But, say you, it is difficult, yes impossible, to find fit 
 foster fathers and mothers. It may be difficult, but I 
 deny that it is impossible. Most of the inmates of our 
 Jewish orphanages are half orphans, their mother being 
 the survivor. In this case, the solution is extremely 
 natural and easy. Aid the mother to rear her own child 
 or children. Appoint a guardian to assist her in this 
 arduous task. The guardian will become her friend. 
 The money which she receives will go a great way to 
 make her economically independent. If she lives in a 
 
 25 
 
neighborhood which does not promise well for her or 
 her children in morals, induce her to settle in other 
 (juarters. The child will grow up in blissful ignorance 
 of the fact that he is a recipient of charity. He is not 
 removed to a palatial "hotel" for a few years to return 
 to his original and naturall}^ more modest surroundings 
 and feel that his mother's home is too mean for him. 
 If a girl she grows U}* in the family and naturally learns 
 her household duties without ado or trouble. There is 
 no danger of contracting unnatural friendships. And 
 the mother herself is protected against the temptation 
 to forget her child and to contract a second and gener- 
 ally unhappy matrimonial responsibility. 
 
 But what about those that have no mother or are to- 
 tal orphans? Is there no aunt or relative that might 
 be trusted and would gladly accept the trust under con- 
 ditions like those outlined? And if there is not, and 
 these cases will be so few as to become almost, as the 
 French mathematicians say, a quantity negligeable, some 
 decent childless family can with due effort be discovered 
 where the child will under the supervision of a con- 
 scientious guardian enjoy the advantages of a homelife 
 and win his way into the affections of his foster parents 
 very rapidly. 
 
 And especially in small communities this family plan 
 is feasible and very easy of execution. It will save 
 many a child from loss of self, but seems to me it might 
 also rescue the small country congregation from the 
 curse now upon most of its class of utter selfishness. 
 
 The country Jew has become a bj^-word among us. 
 
 26 
 
Mention of him leaves a certain by-taste in our mouth. 
 What does the country Jew do for his Judaism? At 
 Pesach he buys about ten pounds of Matzoth. and on 
 Yom Kippur he locks his front door while the rear 
 door is open. That is all he has of Judaism. His 
 charities are zero. He belongs to a lodge. If there be 
 an orphan in his town he sends him to the cities. He 
 is entitled to this by virtue of his membership in the 
 secret brotherhood. Now why should he not retain 
 these poor orphans at home? Guardianship will give 
 him a new interest in humanity. He will awaken to a 
 new^ sense of responsibility. In the open country the 
 child is certainly better off than in the crowded dormi- 
 tory of the Asylum. And the mother wall not swell by 
 her removal to Cleveland or Chicago or New Orleans 
 the population of the ghetto or slum. In the small 
 congregation my plan offers no difficulties, provided we 
 recognize that in moral things the line to take is not 
 that of the least but often that of the greatest resistance. 
 
 Organization seems, in another way, to trench upon 
 individual rights and duties. Under it, the tempta- 
 tion is always to classify. Statistics is the besetting 
 thought and with a view to the annual report's show- 
 ing, superintendents and others are very apt to run 
 toward formalism and to believe that the main object 
 of their employment is to register and catalogue. Cer- 
 tainly we must classify, and that not merely for the 
 purpose of statistics, but also for the purpose of reme- 
 dial activity. 
 
 But let us not forget that men never belong totally or 
 
 27 
 
identically to a class. The old Talmud tells us that 
 God created every man in his image and still he made 
 no man the exact repetition of any other man. We are 
 not exact counteri)arts one of the other. You who are 
 engaged in the line of business, which even God was 
 engaged in as a Malbish Ar umim, know ihsii ready made 
 garments cut to average patterns never exactly fit the 
 actual man. We have our indiosyncrasies and eccen- 
 tricities. Sonie have these and others those. But each 
 one is a pattern to himself, and no two living human 
 beings are exact duplicates. 
 
 For all our classifications and classes, when dealing 
 with the dependent, the poor and the sufferer, let us 
 remember that we are not dealing with a set. We can- 
 not pigeon-hole applicants. We must individualize 
 them. 
 
 Superintendents are natural victims of their profess- 
 ion. Their professional disease is the gradual but un- 
 conscious loss from sheer over-use of the power of 
 individualizing. Where is the remedy? Shall recourse 
 be had to interference by the Boards? The Boards are 
 auditing corporations of the finances and in their hands 
 lie only the general policies of the society. Would a 
 Board in a hospital presume to interfere with the doc- 
 tor's treatment of a case? It is the doctor who has to 
 decide whether a leg has to be amputated or not, and 
 if the Board in charge of a hospital should presume on 
 the score of the expense involved to stay the surgeon's 
 hands, the members thereof would la}^ themselves open 
 to the just criticism of an indignant and outraged public. 
 
 28 
 
It is the physician's and the surgeon's exclusive part in 
 clinic or ward to diaojnose the case and to prescribe the 
 treatment. 
 
 We are dealing in our relief work with sick persons, so 
 to speak, with the maimed and the mutilated. They must 
 be individualized. There is no single case of typhoid 
 fever that runs a course identical with another. There 
 is no single case of hunger, of dependency, of despond- 
 ency, but has its individual aspects and its individual 
 modifying and moulding causes. The Board cannot 
 interfere. It would not interfere with the superintend- 
 ents, if we had the superintendents that organized 
 charity calls for. 
 
 Organized charity has created a new profession, a 
 profession as high as is mine, as is that of the physi- 
 cian, of the engineer, and of the trained man of busi- 
 ness. Applied sociology demands professional training, 
 knowledge and judgment. Our universities have 
 courses for those who would pursue this new vocation. 
 We have independent degrees even in the departments 
 and branches leading to the required preparation for 
 such posts and charges as the superintendencies of our 
 institutions and of our philanthropic agencies. 
 
 It is time to remember that we must have professional 
 men in these responsible positions. Economically 
 biased, of course the man of business will argue that 
 the cheapest man is the best man. If the market is 
 overstocked with worn-out rabbis and decrepit teachers 
 the rate is very much depressed. Worn-out rabbis are 
 cheap, and as not every rabbi is so placed as to be per- 
 
 29 
 
fectly outspoken and still secure of his position, and on 
 the contrary some always are, in the elegant phraseolo- 
 gy of our congregational bosses, out of a job, ])ecause 
 forsooth they have incurred the disfavor of Mrs. Newly 
 Rich, or cannot compete in personal beauty with the 
 Apollo-like graces of a yo.unger rival, there is very little 
 danger of the supply of "misfits" running short. Pro- 
 vided his terms be not exorbitantly high the old or dis- 
 charged rabbi is elected to the honors and entrusted 
 with the responsibilities of the superintendencies of our 
 charities. This metamorphosis from awkward clerical 
 helplessness to trusted competency and appointment is 
 all the more remarkable since while the rabbi is still in 
 the flush of his mental and moral vigor he is rated an 
 ignoramus on all things bearing on charity. He is 
 kept off the executive boards. His suggestions are 
 sneered at and laughed at. Though he has never han- 
 dled a shoemaker's awl or worn the cobbler's apron, he 
 is told to stick to his last. Wisdom on the needs of 
 public or private relief work is the sole prerogative of 
 men and women who have come by their science by 
 intuition and not by tuition. 
 
 I am not in this drawing a portrait of one or the 
 other of our superintendents. I for one respect them 
 most highly and would trust their judgment much 
 more readily than I should that of their infallible 
 superior officers. But because the knowledge has still 
 to be spread abroad that positions like theirs are for 
 professional experts with all the freedom that such pro- 
 fessional science should be accorded, the work of even 
 
 30 
 
experienced men is hampered, and. ultimately robbed 
 of its effectiveness. Professional training must flower, 
 and does so, into sustained o^jen-mindedness. Practical 
 experience, unless corrected and deepened by profes- 
 sional science, cannot escape falling into errors indi- 
 genous to the atmosphere of irksome and irritatingly 
 monotonous complaint and insolence of a2:)peal vrhich 
 every day and in all seasons surrounds the desk and fills 
 the office. Unless this natural condition be corrected 
 by the resourcefulness and resiliancy which the pro- 
 fessionalh' trained man should and does possess, the 
 work will lapse into routine and generalisation. The 
 applicants will cease to be regarded as individuals. 
 They will become figures. 
 
 The expert, scientifically trained administrator will 
 never ossify into a mere cataloguer, or a quack with a 
 patent medicine believed to cure all diseases. As would 
 the conscientious physician, as would the good lawyer, 
 he will treat his clients not as members of a class but 
 as individuals. When he has made his diagnosis and 
 prescribed the treatment, no board has the right to say 
 him nay. His professional knowledge is supreme. 
 
 As little as the board in a well organized congrega- 
 tion has the right to order what a minister shall preach 
 or not, as little as the board of a charity hospital is 
 authorized to regulate the surgeon's operation; even so 
 little has the board of an organized charity to direct 
 the professional work or verdict of its expert superin- 
 tendent. Experts will agree that it is wiser to help one 
 case effectively than to so manage and mangle one 
 
 31 
 
hundred cases as to average an expenditure of S3. 45 
 for every petitioner. Better one case helped at a cost 
 of a thousand dollars than a hundred cases not helped 
 at the same expense. 
 
 Professional men are not cheap. The professional 
 men are dear. It is never the cheapest but often the 
 dearest man that is the best man. 
 
 And another thing seems pressing! y needful in our 
 organized charity. We must guard the individual- 
 ity of our applicants by building our offices in such a 
 way that privacy can be possible for a man or 
 woman who for the first time in his or her life treads the 
 thorny road and lays his or her miser}^ bare to another 
 fellow-man not of his or her blood. 
 
 These are perhaps Utopian demands, but they are 
 demands that have the approval of our religion. They 
 are the flowers grown on the stalk of applied ethics, of 
 modern sociology. 
 
 We Jews have a duty to perform to the world. We 
 boast of our mission. That mission is not to shout 
 into vacancy "One God, one God, one God." The old 
 projDhet protested: "Shout not "n ^2^n, the Temple, 
 the Temple of God." Our mission is to be the leaders 
 along the paths which they walk who know that 
 our one God is the God of the rich and of the poor, the 
 God of the white and of the black, the God of the Jew 
 and the God of the non-Jew. To be the leaders along 
 this path is our duty now if ever, for when was time, 
 when opportunity for this duty was more insistent when 
 was society cleft more painfully into classes and masses 
 
 32 
 
than today? Moral distress stalks about in every camp. 
 Men rely upon bayonets, not upon ballots; upon bul- 
 lets and upon the policeman's baton, and not upon the 
 power of reasoning. Selfishness rampant on all sides, 
 brotherhood on none. 
 
 The cry of despair and of discontent fills the heavens 
 in every zone and in every clime. Where autocracy is 
 supreme and where democracy nominally is triumph- 
 ant the Same cry. the same rage, the same stupor and 
 the same stupidit3\ This is the .Jews' opportunity. 
 
 The Jew has always been in his philosophy a social- 
 ist. Our prophets were the first socialists. They 
 preached the doctrine that the individual is onl}^ for 
 societv; that what we are or have belongs to all. though 
 w^e are the stewards for all of our talents, time and 
 means and minds. 
 
 Our old prophets craved for justice running as free 
 as does water. They had words of stinging censure 
 for those that lay on their beds of ivory and heard not 
 the cry of those they had robbed and despoiled. They 
 cared not for the festal off'erings of those whose hands 
 were red with the blood of persecution. But they 
 yearned for the dawn of the day when God's love should 
 fill the world, when ever3' man should sit under his 
 own vine and his fig-tree. This plea for justice was 
 the sum of their belief in one God; this made them 
 the prophets of God's own chosen people. 
 
 Our monotheism shall not signify moneytheism; it 
 shall be turned into a humanitarian force. The world 
 shall once more learn from us that it is possible to 
 
 33 
 
bridge the chasm between the learned and the un- 
 learned, between the wise and the foolish, the strong 
 and the weak, the rich and the poor, that this harmon- 
 izing and socialization of interest and possession can be 
 wrought without interference with individual ability 
 and individual opportunity or responsibility. The 
 world learning this by our example will indeed say: 
 ''This is a wise and noble people." Ah! Might we 
 understand this! Might in every city a Jewish pattern 
 society be found on the broadest basis, of the newest 
 design, built on the pillars of the old Jewish love of 
 man for man. Then we should contribute more, than 
 by our temples and by our prayer-books, by our fes- 
 tal days and by our days of rest, to the hastening at 
 the time when on the heights the Song of Peace will 
 sound its sweet naelodies and in the valleys its noble 
 refrains will echo, of millions freed at last from fear of 
 death, of millions brought at last into the light of 
 God's love. And you men and w'omen who have come 
 to us with your zeal for the noblest things and thoughts, 
 you are the vanguard of our Jewish army, whose motto 
 is: "It is ours to save." We Jews constitute a salva- 
 tion army, indeed! Not a salvation arm}" with timbrel 
 and drum, with blaring bugle, and blatant blasphemy, 
 but a salvation army wdth the Bread of Life, with love 
 of man for man, a salvation army stationed at its post 
 by God in the dark past, an army only to be recalled 
 from its duty at the supreme hour when the world in- 
 deed will be full of God's knowledge, and therefore of 
 God's peace and love as the waters cover the deep sea; 
 
 34 
 
when no one will presume to tell his brother, "Know 
 thou thy God,'' for every one, the great and the small, 
 the old and the young, the strong and the weak, will 
 show by their lives that they are alive to the truth that 
 each one holds what he has, talent, time, treasure, op- 
 portunity, means, in trust for his brother man, for 
 humanity at large. 
 
 "Israel, to thy tents! Let thy light shine out upon 
 the world." Teach the world by thy deeds that nobler 
 than that Agape which in another book is said to be the 
 greatest in the trinity of Faith, Hope and Love, is our 
 TzedaJcah, our Gemiluth ^Hassadbn — justice and the 
 interrelated consciousness of our solidarity as children 
 of God's great family of man. 
 
 35 
 
No. IS.. 
 
 Some Tendencies of 
 the Modern Drama 
 
 Discourse by Emil G. Hirsch. 
 
 re-printed from 
 
 The Reform Advocate. 
 
 Block & Newman, Publishers. 
 
 CHICAGO. « 
 
Some Tendencies of the Modern Drama.' 
 
 Text: Second Chap. Hosea. 
 
 Books are the windows of the soul Through them 
 we can peep into the innermost being of their authors. 
 But the authors themselves reflect a light which is not 
 theirs. They too are linked to their day. Their speech, 
 and in the s^ense not merely of the articulated sounds, 
 but of the tliought carried is echo of the dominant 
 ideas and the ruling passions of tlieir age. However 
 great a man be he is bonded to his nation, to his genera- 
 tion. He is a mountain peak, courting company with 
 the clouds indeed; catching the morning dawn's greeting 
 first and retaining the evening dusk's beauty last ; but 
 for all that, he is upheld by the mountain range belovr 
 and with it in turn roots in the lowlands. 
 
 This it is that stimulates interest in the study of lit-, 
 erature's masterpieces. AVe are rewarded for our quest 
 certainly by ascertaining how universal ideas become in- 
 dividualized as viewed in the love and the lore of a great 
 thinker. Literature is revelation. It unfolds what 
 its prophetic progenitors held to be vital truths ; it shows 
 what powers were magnetic in their life, what intentions 
 were dynamic in their labors. Commonplace readers 
 have no eves perhaps for this gold that is treasured in 
 the mine of every true book. They search amusement 
 in it; they expect pleasant sensations, and in their 
 ^p]ietite for the unworthy they are cheated out of tru-> 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Books may turn into action; words may take on per- 
 
 3 
 
tonality. Not only once "in the bt'.u'inning was tlu.' Wonl, 
 and the Word be'canio flesli and dwelt among men." 
 Similar miracle, if miracle it l)o, incarnation of idea 
 in life takes place daily. In fact, it is distinctive of 
 the creative mind, to transform idea into personality, 
 impulse into experiment, and conflict into vision. 
 
 The dramatist certainly holds this divine appoint- 
 ment, lie bidding to his aid all the resources that 
 nature has provided, the eye, the ear, the mind, pictures 
 in the living to his auditors the workings of a theory of 
 life which he believes or knows to be fmidamental. 
 The stage, therefore, is under consecration as profound 
 as ever was temple or shrine. The church too has occa- 
 sionally lapsed from her high duty; so the stage has 
 fallen at times from the high plane assigned to it in. 
 the economy of human idealities. But on the whole it 
 may be said, as of the church so of the stage, that fidel- 
 ity has been its virtue. The mastcrworks of the great 
 dramatists, they who still speak to us after the flood 
 tides of passing centuries, have indeed proven their 
 divine selection by the fact of their sur\'ival. 
 
 Aeschylus speaks today in tones as ringing as he 
 did when Greece shouted her joy to him in gratitude 
 for vocalizing what she felt to be vital. Shakespeare 
 is immortal, because his is the dialect of the true hu^ 
 manities, and these are independent of locality and tem- 
 porality. Goethe remains a prophet. His Faust 
 will stir inquiry, will command emotion, will energize 
 intentions until the crack of doom announces the end 
 of all life and things on our shattered globe. 
 
 Wliat be the vitalizing purposes of the modern stage ? 
 I would not survey the counterfeit, the caricature 
 though perhaps it holds the central place in the atten- 
 tion of the general. I should profane this hour were 
 
I to detail scenes magnetic merely through their ob- 
 scenities. But the man of this day, who endeavors to 
 pass through life with open eyes for the realities, who 
 is not absorbed by the daily slave work that necessity 
 or greed has placed upon his shoulders, must recogniz- 
 ing what the stage tokens and what its functions be, 
 have a deep anxiety to learn and to understand the 
 reason vrhy the modern drama is busy with certain 
 social perplexities and is attracted to the presenta- 
 tion of certain phenomena in modern life tlio world ail 
 over today. 
 
 Is it true that they who by genius kissed, have 
 stood in the morning hour on the highest peak of vision, 
 have caught the infection of the basest ? Is it true that 
 they who have the rare ken to read love into the stars 
 and passion into the plants, have all of a sudden been 
 seized with the fury to delve in mire and to deal with 
 mud? Fanatics in the pulpit have so held, and others 
 echoing opinions not of their own fashioning, have oc- 
 casionally emphasized this erroneous view. No, the 
 great modern playwrights in Italy, in Scandinavia, in 
 Germany and even in England, nothwithstanding her 
 Puritanical prudery and tradition, have turned to these 
 darker problems not because they would pander to a 
 morbid appetite for filth, but because, children of their 
 day, they are consciously as their lesser cotemporaries 
 are unconsciously, under the influence of a philosophy of 
 life which seems to justify the disregard of old canons 
 of conduct and to make light of the old solemnities 
 of time-honored moral codes. 
 
 The obsession of our day has been for many circling 
 decades to bridge the chasm between man and brute. 
 This desire to link mind to mud came upon us in con- 
 sequence of our greater familiarity with the things of 
 
 5 • 
 
dust. Wo unrolled tlic curtciin from off tlic <kv as 
 never generation before ours had dared or had succeeded. 
 We deciphered the inscri))tions of the rocks in a way 
 \vliich h^ft no doubt on their ultimate meaning. But 
 doing this work in detail and piecemeal we outraged 
 the innate desire of the lunnan soul for unity. Know- 
 ledge not unified is a flirt promising joys which she 
 never bestows. Laugh as luuch as you may in your 
 conceit of enlightenment, at the presumption of religion 
 to build a system of thought coherent which shall em- 
 brace the visible as well as the invisible ! Religion m do- 
 i]ig this does not violate man's natural leanins^s, but con- 
 serves them. There are men that are not true, there are 
 puppets that know not why they move; there are souls 
 SQ dead that never they ask why and whence and whither. 
 No true man, however, but feels tlie burning desire to 
 have rounded out in fundamental harmony theory of 
 life and explanation of the universe. This harmony 
 religion establishes. It is not a presumption on the 
 part of religion to 'knmv. The agnostic who resigns 
 himself to ignorance outrages the human soul. Laugh 
 as much as you may at the metaphysist's endeavor to 
 cast light into obscurity and to link together in one 
 M'stem what the dust seems to token and what the divine 
 has to tell! For a long time the scientists affected to 
 scorn metaphysics, though none of them but found the 
 credentials for his work in laboratory or on observ^atory 
 by the constructions of metaphysics. There are somv:: 
 awfully learned young men, or old men — they are 
 abundant, especially in Jewish circles, — who having 
 si})ped the light wine of science, affect to say that the 
 realities are central, while theories are at the utmost in 
 the periphery, but these have been left behind by the 
 onward march of lietter information. They claim to be 
 
 ■ 6 
 
m tlie van of progress, and as snch they are admired: 
 but in sober truth they bring up the rear. There is to- 
 day no scientist but ha,s acknowledged the legitiiilacy of 
 metaphysics and its necessity for his own work. There i.^ 
 today no physicist but knows that when he sj^eaks of 
 force, of energy or life even, he is employing meta- 
 physical concepts. There is today no astronomer but 
 sees in the reyolutions of the spheres and in the har- 
 monies of the siderial systems more than methamat- 
 ical or mechanical evolution. He knows that 1)( h.ind 
 mathematics is miud, and thus confesses that teleology, 
 or the theory of purpose in the universe, has found to- 
 day again credence and standing in the palaces of the 
 most devoted students of nature. Metaphysics, like 
 religion, is merely the stammered response to man's in- 
 born desire for harmony of knowledge, for unity of in- 
 tention. 
 
 But natural science, having found mud and mind 
 linked together has attempted to build up its own philos- 
 ophy. It struck as its keynote the concept of struggle. 
 The whole world is a battle field. On a large scale the 
 contest is waged on the heights. Within 'small com- 
 pass it is fought with as intense a ferocit^^ even in the 
 little globule of water. The tear that you shed js an 
 ocean in which, so to speak, battle ships sail against 
 battle ships, and discharge their rapid firmg guns at 
 one another. The whole world, whatever is, whatever 
 lives, is under the law of conflict. This concept cer- 
 tainly admits of no quibble. It has found the key to 
 the mystery, if not of being, then of becoming. Through 
 conflict men conquer, through it humanity is lifted t«) 
 higher position and richer potentialities. 
 
 But to this fundamentally true concept of the univer- 
 sality and the benevolence of conflict, the metaphysics 
 
of llu' natural scii'iices lias added aiiotlicr idea that 
 in this conflict universally waged, naturally and nec- 
 essarily the stronger alone survives. Searchers did not 
 pause to define strength, and thus they jumped at the 
 conclusion that physical strength or depth of cunning 
 is the decisive force which wins the prize. Once under 
 the spell of this unifying idea, they like the systems of 
 former days, threw the light of their theory on what 
 was obscure and pretended to hold together in one what 
 seemed to be disparate and separate. They drew for 
 moral life the inference that strength is a law unto 
 itself; that the strong man, as to him belongs tlie victory, 
 is under no obligation, that he is free to do as he lists, 
 unci not to do as he likes. The strong man is beyond 
 the moral and the immoral ; good and evil for him in the 
 alembic of his strengih are dissolved into fancies. The 
 ^•eak may perhaps be under law, but the strong is not. 
 This is the culminating assertion of Nietzsche. He 
 is typical of our day. Philosophies are not bom at 
 haphazard ; they do not leap out because a brain illumin- 
 ated or obfuscated out of the depth of its own quick 
 virility, or halting femininity fancies certain things to 
 be and certain factors to obtain. Systems are built 
 when they must. Philosophies come as projections 
 of often subconscious and unconscious tendencies of the 
 times in which they are cradled. In our day of Darwin- 
 ian notions, when the struggle for existence is invoked 
 as the ultimate, not merely for the formula explaining 
 celestial cjuantities and qualities, but for the inter- 
 action of social forces and of industrial and economic 
 purposes — when Pseudo-Darwinism is appealed to, to 
 justify anti-Semitism, for instance, to place racialism on 
 a high pedestal again — in our age so constituted in its 
 intellectual affectations or dispositions, Nietzsche is the 
 
 8 
 
natural and logical exiDonent of the practical and ideal 
 interpretations of the meanings of life and of the 
 mysteries of the universe. In an era when Bismarck, 
 the ^[an of Iron, is in the focus of national idolatry, 
 when the strenuous life — with guns that shoot — is the 
 fetish to which nations ])ow the apostolic pronimciation 
 of the canonical value of strength as the ultimate, had 
 to come, not because Nietzsche happened to stumble 
 upon it, but because he grasps, as genius always does, 
 and concretes and crystalizes the notions prevalent and 
 dominant in our generation. Nietzsche preaches that 
 every strong man is a law imto himself, and that the 
 strong man need not care for restrictions that traditions 
 have sanctified: that the strong man certainly, as- 
 none can oppose him unless he be stronger tlian he, 
 has the right to live himself out at whatever cost to 
 others. Others may for the lack of strength still carry 
 chains ; the strong man, as far as his strength renders 
 him competent, may cast away the fetters, and laugh to 
 scorn priest that claims, or conscience that protests that 
 restrictions are sacramental. His highest law is to live 
 himself out. 
 
 In Nietzsche's preachment we have at once the solu- 
 tion of the riddle, whence the peculiar tendency of the 
 modern drama to dwell on marital infelicities and in- 
 fidelities; why D'Anunzio, Sudernmnn, Hauptmann 
 and others too numerous to catalogue, dip their pens into 
 ink to affirm and to canonize this theory of certain 
 natures' divine right to disregard conventionalities and 
 even consecrations. What Nietzsche calls the Ueber- 
 m^nsch, the over-man, the man who is a law untoi him- 
 self, is central in these modern plays. 
 
 It is noticea])le, however, that woman is cloaked with 
 the attributes of over-humanity. Knowing the pecul- 
 
iMi-ities of our age, no one will bo at a lo:?s to discern the 
 reason why as a rule woman is placed before the public 
 in this role. It is not because modern writers share the 
 old prejudicie that woman is the mother of all evil. 
 They scorn to teach that the part assigned to the Uel)er- 
 mensch is evil. Thev do not share the French cyni- 
 cism which advises wherever crime is perpetrated the 
 detective to look for the woman in the case. '^Cherchez 
 la femmel'' is not the polar quest that guides their 
 course. But they are exponential of the strongest 
 drifts of recent decades. 
 
 Who has tugged at chains so strenuously so insistently 
 in these days as has woman? Speak of the endeavors 
 of labor to rise to freedom ; the struggle on the part 
 of the wage earner is perhaps more dramatic because 
 it operates with greater battallions; but the heat of 
 battle cannot be measured by the numbers of the com- 
 batants. j\Iany a fight is bitter though raging between 
 only two. A duel may be'a very Gettysburg. Woman 
 h.as been pre-eminently the struggler for emancipation 
 in the nineteenth century. She has urged that her 
 humanity was denied her. And with that peculiar 
 fatality that seems to defy rhythm in the evolution of 
 ideas, a fatality that the student of history has met on 
 ivery page in the story of the intellectual progress of the 
 race, from the "underhuman" which women protest has 
 been their assigned and enforced lot, they have reached 
 f>ut for the ^^over-human." In keeping with this 
 phenomenon, the master dramatists of the day as a rule 
 make woman the representative oracle of the overhuman. 
 It is woman by preference that in the modern plays leaps 
 over the barriers of conventionalities "dignified in the 
 dialect of the unprogressive as moralities." 
 
 That Northern master in the art of character drawing 
 
 10 
 
Ibseu. himself, one is tempted to say, an arctic sun 
 shining above the horizon for on^ long summer day 
 ^nd setting in twilightless ^nnter darkness for an equally 
 long spell, was the first perhaps among modern play- 
 wrights of distinction to predicate of woman the ^'over- 
 human/'' His Xora of the Doll's House at least proph- 
 ecies in this strain. 
 
 To theater goers as well as to the readers of Ibsen's 
 works this wife who discovers that she no lono-er loves the 
 husband with whom she is united, is a familiar figure. 
 The saner among us I dare say have however never shed 
 tears over her fate. We have not sympathized with her 
 impatience at the trivialities of her domestic duties. We 
 simply admired the great actresses that were able to 
 lend some semblance of reality to this woman dis- 
 illusioned l)y the discovery that her life had been a 
 blank after her awakening to the fact that what her 
 nature entitled her to, liad not come to her share. Her 
 husband failed to understand her. He has not com- 
 prehension for the greatness of her sacrifice. Domes- 
 ticity crushes her. She knows herself destined for a 
 fuller life. In her arithmetics of what she has wrought 
 her child is ignored. She leaves her husband with the 
 specious plea that the child will be looked after by the 
 imrse. This misunderstood cramj^ed Xora gasping 
 for breath, yearning for freedom from irksome chains is 
 the first in a long succession of /'Uebermenschen" 
 of the female sex who will on the stage not bow to the 
 law sanctifying and sanctioning the conventionalities or 
 the superstitions or the prejudices of a darker age and 
 a more stupid and slavish generation. 
 
 It does not matter that Ibsen told of Xora's irksome 
 struggles and disappointment at a time when Xietzsche's 
 :sun had not yet risen to the zenitli. Tlie affinity of 
 
 11 
 
intention bet wet n tiR' Scandinavian and the Teuton 
 Titans is plain. \'ain have been all attempts to invest 
 with tragic pathos the fate of the woman running away 
 from what had been to her a mere doll's house. Even 
 the slamming door at the end announcing that she has 
 gone forth to her freedom fails to make her resolution 
 heroic. In her determination to abandon child and hus- 
 band passion has not part. This circumstance has been 
 explained as due to the Northern temperament of her 
 intellectual father. But to whatever cause this peculi- 
 arity must be attributed the absence of this element 
 makes her step all the more difficult to 
 understand and to justify. Is it at all 
 reasonable that a Avoman should leave her child to 
 the care of strangers merely because at a crucial moment 
 she finds herself disappointed in the man whom she 
 took for better or for Avorse to have and to hold for her 
 husband? To her child a normally constituted woman 
 would have clung. In fact the thought of the child 
 would have reconciled her to duties which while hard 
 were by no means incompatible wath self respect. The 
 more closely the character of N'ora is inspected the more 
 clearly apparent does it become that Ibsen did not draw 
 from life. He clothed a theory and a gospel of his owji 
 with the semblance of a woman. His creation lacks 
 warm blood and healthy nerves. She is one of the 
 thousand victims of hysteria afflicted with a false con- 
 ception of what individual dignity and freedom imply. 
 Had duty not been a complete stranger to her vocabulary 
 none of the foolish misconceptions upon which her de- 
 cision turns would have arisen in her mind. As it is 
 she speaks the dialect of a philosophy that never appeals 
 1o a woman sound in body and sane in mind. Ibsen 
 has failed to formulate the correct answer to the prob- 
 
 12 
 
lein which he pretends to analyze. The conflict which, 
 he lodges in the soul of Xora is artificial. It is void 
 of seriousness. It displays the well known marks of 
 invention for stage purposes. The psychology upon 
 .which it assumably rests is false. Xeither pathos nor 
 passion is involved therein. We have in wearisome 
 langTiage an academic dissertation on abstract rights in 
 which responsibility and maternal instinct alike are 
 forgotten or wilfully overlooked. 
 
 Deeper understanding for psychological forces which 
 often compel the rupture of bonds hallowed by morality 
 is sho^^^l by tlie productions of recent German and 
 Italian dramatists. If the intention of these be to 
 preach the doctrine that ^'overmen" have the natural 
 right to live themselves out they at least concede that the 
 "overhuman*' which brings on the catastrophe is not 
 rooted in chilly reasoning but is under the hot iH'eath 
 of i^assion obscuring the clearer calmer vision of re- 
 flective mind. In this regard the palm belongs with- 
 out doubt to D'Anunzio. His heroes are not puppets. 
 They are moulded of flesh and blood. Their overheated 
 heart it is which calls for freedom. But they do not 
 reason out their right to live their own life as they 
 list without regard for obligations previously incurred 
 as one would a mathematical proposition. Passion de- 
 fies logic. And therefore D'Anunzio with good tact 
 refuses to syllogize. His characters wt are able to 
 understand and even to pity though it is plain enough 
 wherein their weakness consists. Even passion is 
 meant to bo held in leash. Though this too must be 
 said that often he who has fallen before the temptation 
 is fundamentally a better man than many of the 
 straightlaced automata of conventional correctness that 
 know not the fury of the tempter. This may be distrust- 
 is 
 
^d a.s a dangerous doctrine. But a deeper insiglit into the 
 deptliS of tlio luiiuan soul will corroborate the inain 
 contention. Paul Heyse's Mary of Magdala gospels 
 tlie theory. The fanatics of virtue often lack love. 
 Tlic scarlet woman often bosoms a heart which will 
 flower anew as soon as the sunshine of a sublime faith 
 melts the hard rind of sensuality. They who would 
 cast the first stone ai:e not always without guilt. Their 
 souls may be dead or never have been touched to life. 
 Tliey are irresponsive to the invitations of a love whicji 
 in its su])limity seems a revelation of the divine while 
 she whose body has been tainted by lust and sin may be 
 open to the call. Mary of Magdala is therefore not over- 
 human. She is transcend ingly hmnan. D'Anunzio's 
 La Gioconda, however, varies the familiar theme of the 
 fatality or freedom if you so choose to put it, of Titanic 
 souls. The sculptor falls violently in love with his 
 model. It is not carnal lust that makes him forget the 
 vows he exchanged with his wife. Xo, his model has 
 awakened in him the creative flame. As she sits be- 
 fore him his eyes see what for nuiny struggling years 
 he has tried in vain to behold and his hands force the 
 marble to obedience in a degree before unattained. 
 lie feels that from this young woman ])efore him has 
 entered into his being something which gives his imagin- 
 ation wings. His artistic temperament outruns his 
 conscience. He falls to awaken to the bitter reality of 
 his undoing when it is too late to retrace the fatal 
 steps. But it is the girl that will not relinquish him. 
 H he will not be hers alive he shall be hers dead. She 
 {.ttempts to slay liim. He is saved mere- 
 ly by the unselfish devotiofi of the wife 
 whom he has wronged. But his soul has flo\Mi from 
 him nevertheless. What the girl in a later interview 
 
 14 
 
vritli tlie wife puts into vehement words is true. Shr 
 it was that touched to genius his dormant powers. There- 
 from she draws her title to possess him. Hers is the 
 right of o^^^lership in liim and his work, the wonder- 
 fiil statue to which she was the inspiration. Obligations 
 others than tliese based upon her natural rights she will 
 not respect or even acknowledge. She w411 destroy the 
 statue. .It is hers as is he who created it. The poor 
 wife again tries to save her husband's masterpiece. The 
 knife that would have multilated the marble strikes 
 her. The fiend cuts off her hands. It is in this 
 wise that the philosophy of the natural rights based 
 upon power presents itself through the prism of an 
 Italian mind. 
 
 In Germany among the more famous exponents of the 
 dogma stands first Sudermann. In his recent play "Es 
 lebe das Leben" in English version entitled ''The joy 
 of living" he endeavors to justify the creed. He in- 
 troduces us to the life of the higher classes in modern 
 Berlin. Political trappings and discussions on the 
 morality of drueling are among the "properties" he brings 
 on the stage. Central to his intention is the character 
 of his heroine, the wife of one of the aristocrats that 
 make their bow to the auditorium to give semblance of 
 vitality to his plot. Married when very young and like 
 sc- many of lier class without being touched l)y what 
 the French call ''la gTande passion" the early years of 
 her conjugal life were peaceful and uneventful and her 
 t^oul found satisfaction in the unfolding sweetness of her 
 child's nature. But one day there crosses her path one 
 whom to see was for her to know that he was the com- 
 plement to her own deeper self that she belonged to hin> 
 by the prior right of her soul's needs so far not arouscil 
 and not appeased by the side of her husband. That 
 
 15 
 
meeting gives lur wliat .-he never knew before, true 
 happiness and the sense of her due. ^\^lat to her the 
 marriage vows? Wliat to her her obligation as a mother? 
 She knows her rights. She has to "live herself out.'^ 
 The inevitable, to speak in the jargon of the school, 
 happens. But her predestined complement, the man 
 through whom she has discovered her true affinity and in 
 whom she has fomid her so long denied fullness of life 
 happens to meet her husband and become his friend. 
 This friendship disturbs finally his equanimity. He 
 feels squirms of conscience. Platonic friendship takes 
 the place of passionate love. Years pass by. Political 
 conjunctures make it advisable that her former lover 
 should stand for a seat in the Reichstag fonnerly held 
 by her husband. She knows what store her friend sets 
 1/y political success. He will become a power in the 
 state, the defender of virtue and the people's morals. 
 She puts all her energies into the political campaign lo 
 achieve for him the anibitious victory. But this very 
 political activity of his and hers is their undoing. Some 
 former secretary of his knows of the past illicit relations 
 Jjetween her and her friend. The catastrophe ensues. 
 Her husband is estopped from avenging his outraged 
 honor by an appeal to the code of the pistol. She con- 
 fesses ail to him but without the least tinge of remorse. 
 What in sober truth was her crime? She merely followed 
 the imjDerious impulse of her nature. This to do was 
 h.er natural right. But she is generous enough to 
 make way with herself but again not because the furies 
 of conscience drive her to self-dstruction. No, simply 
 out of consideration for her friend who gifted as few 
 men are must live to do service in Parliament. 
 
 Dramas often terminate in death scenes. Poetic jus- 
 tice seems to demand this unknotting of the involved 
 
 16 
 
plot. Or in the tragedies of profoimder appeal the 
 old Greek ida of black ''x\te/' inexorable Fate, is worked 
 out to its logical conclusion and the pathos of the con- 
 flict is thus heightened by the fmitlessness of the 
 strugo-le in whicTi predestination on the one hand and 
 man's desire, remorse or hatred on the other, are arrayed 
 in unequal combat. But in this latest work of Suder- 
 mann's neither poetic justice nor inexorable fate insists 
 on the final suicide. The woman's "overhumanity''' 
 alone justifies her suicide, as it does her attitude 
 and conduct throughout. She is superior to life and 
 the obligations it entails. Life is for her either the 
 opportunity to live as she desires or it is an empty husk 
 vrhich at her o^ni pleasure she may throw away. It 
 is Xietzsche without even a figieaf that preaches the 
 sermon from the first act to the last. 
 
 But shall Xietzsclie with his autocratic . and aristo- 
 cratic moral anarchism pass for the final accent in the 
 revelations of histrionic art? That he holds forth 
 ^•f rom the boards that signify the world" as the Germans 
 have denominated the stage, is a powerful commentary 
 on the preoccupation of our generation. * But the day 
 of better things cannot be far distant. We may take 
 c-ourage. The signs are not wanting that the intoxica- 
 tion of misapplied Darwinian formulae is giving way to 
 soberer valuations of the distinctions between the truly 
 human and the really brutal. Many a soul is crying 
 out in the darkness for a clearer light. In all fields of 
 human endeavor the seers are on their watchtower 
 looking out for the brighter morning. The brutal 
 doctrine of force is rejected even by statesmen. Kip- 
 ling's "Eecessional" sings with truer note than his 
 ^Vhite man's burden." While "overmen" still decree the 
 ooursG of commerce and industrv', others are not silent 
 
 17 
 
that call for roinarrying power to responsibility. Con- 
 science with its one and ever insistent sacrament "Duty"'' 
 has not been finally silenced. And so after the obses- 
 sion of this Xietzsche cult will have passed off, the stage 
 also will again thunder fortli the nobler truths that life 
 is even for the strongest responsibility that freedom to 
 do as one lists is of all forms of slavery the worst and 
 most degrading. The new woman is not she that like 
 Nora abandons child and home because forsooth she has 
 linked her life to that of one that fails to do her justice. 
 She will not slain the door upon her child's future for the 
 sake of forcing her own liberation. 'No home in which 
 a true womanly w^oman is queen is a dolFs house. Even 
 its trivialities are through the alchemy of duty lifted 
 into tremendous potencies. No woman- w^ill reason as 
 does the model in Gioconda. Or if she does her scar- 
 let robes will not be regarded as the ermine of heroic 
 virtue. No woman will without remorse avow such 
 a juisstep as Sudermann assumes one of noble birth will 
 commit simply to fill her life with joy and then with- 
 out shame glory in her conduct and finally to disem- 
 barrass not those that she has wronged but him whom 
 she claims for her o^vn and wdiom she has grudgingly 
 given up while her soul is still aflame with unquenched 
 thirst, with cynic frivolity end her life. The strong 
 will recognize again that strength is not a patent to 
 license but an obligation to be more loyal to the law 
 evolved indeed by man in the course of the ages but 
 bearing the seal of divinity all the more impressively be- 
 cause it carries the vital truths tried and found pure 
 gold in the hot furnace of human pain and human temp- 
 tation in the crucible of human shame and human 
 remorse. Our religion certainly views strength and 
 jiower in a light altogether different from that in which 
 
 18 
 
naturalism and Nietzsche have construed their import 
 and their privileges. Judaism's one solicitude is to 
 make men human, not to allow a few to overreach them- 
 selves under the instigation of their conceit of being over- 
 human. This cry for fuller and freer life, this plea that 
 strong natures must and may live out their life as their 
 will dictates and their passion requires, of course, is in 
 answer to the false insistence of the Church that nature 
 is corrupt and the natural man is under the curse of 
 sin. Nietzsche is the reaction upon the morality which 
 Judaism never formulated in which weakness as such is 
 canonized and stupidity or poverty of spirit is S3'no- 
 nymed with saintliness. Our religion has always in its 
 normal moods been opposed to whatever smacked of 
 asceticism. Joy was its undernote and it quivered in 
 ever}' chord of its melodious intonation. But the joy 
 of living which our religion oifered to its devotees' was 
 that which flowered from duty well performed, from 
 obligation seriously recognized. It tempered the hot 
 breath of passion. It refined the lower desires. It 
 harnessd the merely physical to the purposes of the 
 spiritual. It proclaimed the Law in which good and 
 evil were not eliminated or placed in a pla.ne beyond 
 which the strong had proceeded. No, evil and good, 
 truth and falsehood were alternatives which m.an could 
 elect and through the choice thus made, stren.gth became 
 either a blesvsing or a curse to its possessor. The Jewish 
 woman was never weak in the sense in wliich the expon- 
 ents of this modern doctrine of animalism would have us 
 ; believe all women are that continue to be chained. Such 
 '- freedom as Ibsen's Nora craved, as D'Anunzio's 
 f. model insisted on, as Sudermann's Countess claimed, 
 Jewish women have always spurned. Their freedom 
 was the liberty of doing their duty. True has been 
 
 19 
 
for all times what the T?al)bis predicate of the evil years 
 of Israel's Egyptian slavery. Jewish women wrought the 
 liberation of their people. The modern drama mirroi^s 
 our day's aberrations. Let us Jews have a care lest they 
 j)icture also our conditions. As long as Jewish ideals 
 of morality shall continue to be sceptered in our homes 
 and find loyal exponents in our Synagogues a better, 
 freer and nobler life will be ours than that which the 
 new playwrights affect to hold up as true and legitimate. 
 
 20 
 
'ATTACKS ON JEV/S AND JUDAISM.' 
 
 Lesson: Chap, iii.; Book of EstLer 
 
 It is not the fault of the Jew that the okl oriental 
 tale incorporated in the literature of the ancient He- 
 brews, about Esther and Mordecai, retains its pathetic 
 interest. Thirty years ago there were those among ns 
 who honestly and openly were of the opinion that the 
 day was not far distant when Israel would learn to for- 
 get the story of his persecution. But the assurance 
 then treasured has been rudely dispelled. As in dark 
 medieval days, so in these light flooded years of a 
 new century, the cry is heard on all sides echoing the 
 complaint and accusation of thei old Persian vizier, that 
 the Jew is a stranger in the lands Avhere he has been 
 given hospitality; that he pursues aims and ambitions 
 distinctly and viciously his own, emplopng methods 
 that are hostile to the welfare of the people in the 
 midst of whom he dwells. The new age seems to 
 have discovered many a new truth, but alas ! not enough 
 of truth to correct the old misconceptions to which 
 the Jew has been exposed and of which he has been 
 the victim ever since he made his first bow on the 
 stage of time. Xo new indictment has been drawn; 
 no new count has been added to the old bill. In what- 
 ever modern language the charge is phrased it carries 
 the old burden, it reiterates the familiar accusation. 
 In view of this constancy of prejudice, it behooves 
 the Jew every year anew on those days when fiction or 
 
memory speaks to him of persecution baffled and of 
 hatred thwarted, to probe to the roots these wearisome 
 and worrying misconceptions, to analyze the reasons oL' 
 this universal misjudgment; to examine into his own 
 conduct; to verify his own attitude. If there be in his 
 own character that which calls for amendment it is his 
 duty to set about remedying the defect. But if, upon 
 investigation calm and dispassionate, the conclusion is 
 forced upon him that his is not the blame, that what 
 the world calls his stubbornness is really his fidelity 
 in the service of higher ideals, the memory which speaks 
 to him of conflicts erst won will be an incitement for 
 him all the more to strcngihen the foundations of his 
 faith, to draw from the lessons of the past new vigor 
 and virility for the contest wrathfully raging in the 
 present. To this purpose I would have you dedicate 
 with me the ensuing hour. 
 
 The old yet ever new accusations against the Jew may 
 be grouped under four distinct heads. Each caption 
 indicates an impelling error, which suggests in the minds 
 of such as host the prejudice, the workings through the 
 Jew of forces inimical to the best interests and the 
 holiest intensities of the higher humanities. Time 
 will not permit me to deal with all four; but the two 
 that more than the others are in the forefront of at- 
 tention I ask permission to present. The first source 
 of prejudice against the Jew is a quasi scientific theory 
 of racial distinctions. That the Jew constitutes a dis- 
 tinct race is the certainty cherished by his enemies. 
 Less emphasis used to be laid on the distinctness of the 
 racial qualities of the Jew in former days. That thi'i 
 clement of prejudice has become very prominent in 
 these later times is clearly the concomitant of the new 
 philosophy claiming to be based upon natural sciences, 
 
 2 
 
which has cast an unholy spell over historians and 
 statesmen. Far be it from me to discredit the groat 
 achievements wrought by the young sciences busy with 
 the secrets of the heavens and earth. If the latter haK 
 of the nineteenth century is aureoled in glory, the 
 lustre came as a reward of assiduous court paid bv 
 master minds to the coy genius of nature. Our mar- 
 velous perfection in technical control over the re- 
 sources of soil and sea, is clearly the outcome of our 
 deeper intimacy with the world-building energies sweep- 
 ing through eternity. But in the wake of this victory 
 over reluctant Xature, has arisen a philosophy which 
 robs man of the regal crowS. Under the passion for 
 unity which is characteristic of the bent of mind 
 anxious to uncurtain the arcana of nature, the thought 
 leapt out in fatal fury that mud was equal to mind, 
 and man of one destiny as were the microbes. Men 
 gloated over and gloried in the kinship thus established 
 between the human and the animal. And out of this 
 mood sprang the vitality of the idea that race is a deter- 
 minant of the humanities. In the flush tide of 
 joy at having discovered a principle to establish the 
 relative ranking of the various and varied components 
 of the human family, the prophets of the race Shibbo- 
 leth overlooked that in strict scientific parliance race 
 was vague and indefinite. This very lack of pre- 
 cision made the Fetish all the more popular. His- 
 torians and politicians proclaimed the new divinity and 
 invoked it to lend dignity to their analysis of the moving 
 impulses underlying the achievements of past time 
 as well as the ambitions still aflame to reconstruct the 
 map of the world. Materialism had contended that 
 thought depended upon cerebral chemistry. Character 
 now was declared to be the precipitate of blood qualities. 
 
 3 
 
To the undoing of the true bond of humanity this no- 
 tion of racial distinctions was called to the witness 
 stand. Eecrudescence of hatred fanned into a con- 
 suming flame withering tenderer flowers of sentiment 
 and drying up the springs of sympathy marked the 
 spread of the fateful creed. Blood decides quality^, 
 blood assigns rank in the human family. So ran its 
 destructive insistence. Small wonder that the emphasis 
 so beautifully put in the opening chapters of Genesis, 
 on the unity of the race, was speedily blurred, Eacial 
 lines mark men as belonging to different groups. This 
 uncertain note of the great anthropologists smaller 
 men twisted into the assertion that these vague dis- 
 tinctions settled the question of the relative superiority 
 or inferiority of the sons of man. Soon the Aryan was 
 heard declaiming that his blood marked him the pre- 
 destined leader of all mankind. To this conceit of the 
 predestined superiority of the Aryan the re-rise of 
 distrust against the Jew must be traced. Tlie Jew 
 of course may not boast of Aryan blood. Tlie theory 
 declares him to be a Semite. What matter that this 
 thesis is open to serious doubt? Has passion ever 
 weighed reason or evidence? But lot for argument's 
 sake the position be conceded. Is the further con- 
 clusion justified that because of different blood the 
 Jew is the inferior of his Aryan co-tenant of earth? 
 Stronger proof were needed than the hypothesis offers to 
 substantiate the insistence. Still this Aryan conceit 
 found willing acceptance and violent expression es- 
 pecially in Germany. In that land, once the glorious 
 home of Kant and Lessing, to-day anthropology is 
 cited into court to justify treason to all that Kant 
 held holy and Lessincr proclaimed. Formerly and else- 
 where anthropology was content to register differences 
 
 4 
 
in color, stature, and physiognomy observed among 
 men. Or anthropology collected information concern- 
 ing the habitat, the mental conceits, the religious no- 
 tions of the various components of the human race. But 
 to-day from being a descriptive science, anthropology 
 is forced to assume the role of a normative regulator. 
 The latest book on anthropology to make a stir, is en- 
 titled ^Tolitical Anthropolog}^" To race qualifications 
 are traced by this new branch of the science of anthro- 
 pology capability for self government and predisposi- 
 tion for slavery. If in certain sections of the world 
 political initiative is found to be active this political 
 anthropologist ascribes this to the racial constitution 
 of the inhabitants. Where on the other hand, this 
 power of political self-determination is found absent, 
 distinction of race is pressed into service to explain the 
 difference. Formerly, you remember, climate, topogra- 
 phy, the configuration of the land, the proximity of 
 the sea, the height of mountains, the depression of val- 
 leys used to figure in the equation of political capacity 
 or its reverse. But this theory advanced by Buckle and 
 others has now entirely been crowded to the rear; no 
 longer are the mountains invoked; nor are the meads 
 brought forward; no longer is influence credited to 
 stars, or to storms, to seas or to rivers. Blood alone 
 is given the right to account for distinctions of mind, 
 of morality, of political sagacity or political incompe- 
 tence. Only the Aryan race, these new anthropologists 
 tell us, is capacitated by blood' for the progressive work 
 of subjugating nature. All other races are fated to 
 passivity. And am^ong these that lack the initiative 
 genius, the Semite again by his blood is gifted to drav/ 
 profit unearned from the hard labor, the inventive in- 
 genuity of the Aryan race. From this ingenious theory 
 
 5 
 
the conclusion is drawn that the Aryans are by God, 
 or by nature, appointed the rulers, while the Sem- 
 ites are marked in the laboratory of nature herself as 
 dan^jjerous to progress, a dissolving element against 
 which precautions must be taken. 
 
 From the contiguity and contact of unequal races 
 perils arise for the race of superior quality. Admixture 
 of baser blood is to be apprehended. For the effect of 
 such intermingling always has been the deteriorating 
 of the quality of the original superior race. To pre- 
 vent this uncanny eventuality must therefore be the con • 
 cern of wise statescraft. Miscegenation will prove the 
 deathblow to original inventiveness and capacity only 
 vested in the pure stock. Tlie Semite being of inferior 
 blood his presence among the Aryan peoples is a grave 
 menace. Hencc|, prudence would suggest that the 
 Semite must be removed ; and where this is impossible, 
 that he must be placed under such restrictions as will 
 under the play and sweep of natural causes tend to 
 make his extermination an assured fact a few centurici 
 hence. 
 
 This has been the program of political reactionary 
 parties in Germany for many a century. ISTow it struts 
 forth in the plumage of a scientific theory. It has 
 met with willing acceptance by men of the Plehve type, 
 the modern Hiaman^s of Russia. Yea, a few yf^ars ago 
 the jargon of this quasi scientific conviction found the 
 French people in a receptive mood ; if then to our con- 
 sternation even France was on the point of forgetting 
 her glorious traditions and memories, the sad phe- 
 nomenon is sufficiently accounted for by th.o havoc 
 wrought directly and otherwise by this pseudo-scientific 
 doctrine which makes race the determinant of human 
 values 
 
In the face of this prejudice it is easy to see how 
 futile the means are employed by some cowardly Jews 
 to escape beinor touched by its breath. Mind you, it is 
 race that determines superiority and inferiority. One 
 cannot correct his race. Baptism will not wash away the 
 stain of the inferior blood; change of name will not 
 modify the quality of the life elixir. Political creed 
 is ineffective as well. Blood is the decisive element, 
 and it is constant. Even intermarriage will not help 
 the matter, for according to this anthropology, the 
 superior race is impotent to lift the inferior to it^. 
 heights. Wherever the inferior race is allowed to inter • 
 mingle with its better, the nature of the superior com- 
 ponent is affected for the worse. Mix white and black, 
 the result is not a better white, a nobler black, but a 
 despicable Mulatto, who exhibits, so they say, all the 
 evil qualities of his progenitors, to the elimination 
 even of the possible factors of strength originally within 
 the grasp of the inferior partner to this unholy union. 
 Allow Aryan and Semite to mix; the Aryan loses and 
 the Semite cannot gain. Hence it is essential thai 
 the modern Aryan be on his ,sruard against the insidious 
 attacks planned and plotted by the Semites, who would 
 open wide the doors to the undoing of the Aryans by 
 choosing wives or husbands from the nobler stock. 
 
 This consistent Aryan brutalism is without equivoca- 
 tion avowed by a larcre portion of modem German and 
 European anti-Semites. They have maintained it in 
 parliament, and emphasized it from public platforms, 
 that the baptized Jew is still a Jew; they have pro- 
 claimed it in parliament, and have importuned the 
 public authorities to act upon their protest, that the 
 descendant of a mixed marria.sre one of whose parents 
 is a Semite and the other an Aryan, shall not be cred- 
 
 7 
 
ited with Aryan distinction, but be rated and ranked 
 vnth the inferior Semites. It must be admitted that 
 the logic of this demand cannot be disputed as soon as 
 the chief premise is conceded. Tlie theory itself has, 
 especially during the last four 3^ears, gained many ad- 
 herents, largely because a very fascinating book, writ- 
 ten seemingly in a purely scientific spirit, has unsettled 
 opinions and weakened doubts. I refer to the famous — 
 or shall I say, infamous? — work by Houston Stewart 
 Chamberlain, "Tlie Foundations of the Nineteenth 
 Century." In it Chamberlain operates with a free 
 hand with the concepts of modern anthropology. While 
 convinced that certain Aryans are predestined for ex- 
 cellence, he would qualify materially the scope of the 
 general thesis. For this universal Aryanism w^ould 
 include many races or nations that, according to his 
 Teutonic chauvinism, should be denied the glory of the 
 foreordination. He modifies, therefore, the Aryanism 
 of this modern school of anthronologists by introducing 
 a new terminology and a new principle of selection. 
 His predestined group he denominates the Germanic- 
 Celtic race. To it he ascribes every act of which his- 
 tory has recorded the beneficial influence, making for 
 advancement, for libert}^, for civilization. This Ger- 
 manic-Celtic aggregate he rates as the one factor and 
 force in every movement upward, in science, religion, 
 culture, commerce, industry and what not. He would 
 have his ""chosen people" be on their guards against 
 the Semite, who will, unless checked, vitiate the blood, 
 and thus will bring to an inglorious end the rise of 
 mankind conditioned on preserving in absolute purity 
 this stock of energetic men of toil, of inventors, pioneers, 
 of men who have changed the surface of the earth and 
 snatched, Prometheus like, from the stars the vital 
 
 S 
 
spark of life and thouglit. Houston Stewart Cham- 
 berlain would not have had so many readers, and would 
 have not found such ready credence had not the erratic 
 genius on the throne of Germany found in the words 
 and contentions of this Englishman writing in German 
 a note quivering in harmony with a predisposition of 
 his own. The German emperor made the curious 
 book popular. Purchasing a number of copies, he pre- 
 sented them, with his autograph dedication, to his 
 cronies. I am surprised that a certain American set 
 has not yet made the book their newest fetish ; for no 
 American has been admitted into the august presence 
 of the German emperor during the last few years, but 
 was presented with a copy. I am prepared to hear that 
 our Women's Clubs will have classes, to study Houston 
 Stewart Chamberlain's book. Perhaps they are waiting 
 till an English translation appears ; but as the book is 
 very bulky it is not likely that an English publishing 
 house will venture on the enterprise. Still the moment 
 it is translated into English we may make ready for 
 its echoes from both orthodox and liberal pulpits. Tlie 
 likelihood is stronor that then here bv a certain 
 ilk it will be dinned into our ears that the Germanic- 
 Celtic forces have carried the whole burden of humanity 
 while the Semitic hordes have been the parasites fat- 
 tening on the labors of their nobler Germanic-Celtic pro- 
 ducers. Ignoble envy, base passion are the inspiration 
 of the modern as they were of the old Haman's. Bui 
 being veiled behind a cloud of hazy would-be scien- 
 tific notions, the motive of the modern is less plain 
 than was that of the older; and his method is all the 
 more dangerous. 
 
 In this situation, what becomes our duty? Those 
 of you who have been regularly among my hearers 
 13 "^ Q " 
 
will anticipate my answer. I must again expose myself 
 to being charged with repeating myself. But I am not 
 Shakespeare. Nor am 1 rich. Shakespeare, I know, 
 never repeats, and rich merchants, I must believe, are 
 always original. That, at least, I learned from a plaj 
 I recently attended while in New York. The central 
 personage on the stage is a multimillionaire whose only 
 argument is, "I am rich." On the score of his wealth, 
 he presumes to be competent to do anything, and tu 
 be exalted above all the conventionalities and limita- 
 tions that bind common clay. Upon the theory of thi^ 
 play I presume that one who is rich is never under the 
 necessity of repeating himself. The w^ealthy are always 
 original. But as I am neither rich nor Shakespeare, 
 I must occasionally repeat; and to-day I shall repeat 
 a very familiar contention of mine : In the face of thi.^ 
 new racial conceit we Jews must have a double care not 
 to fall into the error of our enemies. There has been 
 Semitism as obnoxious as ever was Aryanism. This 
 Semitisni has found voice in Synogogue, and in Jewish 
 circles at times in a pitch that goes far to explain and 
 to excuse the extravagances of counter Aryanism. The 
 Jew has been invoked time in and time out, in season 
 and out of season, as the most wonderful type of hu- 
 manity ; and that not on the ground that he was gifted 
 with mentality, or had been disciplined to keener mor- 
 ality; not because his history marked him a hero — the^e 
 lines if at all were urged so faintly as to become im- 
 perceptible in the picture. But with all the greater 
 5- tress was tlie *^''pure blood" of the Jew brouglit forward. 
 .Whatever distinction was credited or claimed revolved 
 around the purity of the race to which all other excel- 
 lencies were held secondary, if not regarded as conse- 
 quences thereof. Hence the appeal ever iterated and 
 
 10 
 
urgent to guard at all hazard this precious unequaled 
 purity of the stock. Hence the cry against inter-mar- 
 riage. Hence on the part of men and women who 
 nabitually sneer at Synagogue, and professedly are be- 
 yond the highest outlooks of Israel's religion, the strong- 
 est opposition to any step that might tend in the di- 
 rection of rendering the purity of this exceptional 
 blood less intense than their racial conceit imagines it 
 is. As long as the Jew prates about his blood, as long 
 as the Jew refers to his race, to the neglect of the spirit- 
 ual elements involved in Jewish birth, he cannot be 
 surprised that the larger world takes up the challenge 
 and answers his boast with a still more emphatic declar- 
 ation that Semitic blood is not of as fine a composition 
 and preordained to as effective a potency as is that 
 throbbinsf in the blue veins of a true and uncontam- 
 inated Aryan. 
 
 Eacial chauvinism is the foam cresting the wave of 
 modern naturalism. Grant that man is only a brute, 
 then the quality of his blood detern^ines his rank. This 
 inevitably leads to conflicting claims. Pot would not 
 be quite as black as Kettle, while Kettle would pass for 
 a nobler aristocrat than Pot. Houston Stewart Cham- 
 berlain in sober truth is giving Semitic Chauvinists a 
 Roland for their Oliver. Semitic presumption neces- 
 sarily arouses Aryan pretentions. In the presence of 
 this rampant racialism, modesty befits the Jew. A 
 truce in the midst of Jewry to all high flown declama- 
 tions about the Jewish blood ! 
 
 ^y^ut if this racialism is the main source 
 whence prejudice flows forth a turbulent and 
 turbid tide; if it is the arsenal where to-day hatred 
 finds stacked its pointed and poisoned spears ; the older 
 jargon of distrust has not been forgotten and often it;s 
 
 11 
 
venomous vocabulary may be heard in hif^h and low 
 places. Nationalism is the name of this older sister of 
 modern racialism. Tlie Jew constitutes a distinct na- 
 tion. This has been the cry throughout the circling 
 ages. It is still the fond conviction of the Drumont's, 
 the Stoocker's of modern days, as it was the artfully 
 worded plea of their prototype, the Haman of our 
 story. In the verse that we read the grand vizier' re- 
 quests the king to give him power over the Jews, on 
 the ground that they constitute a people scattered 
 throughout the vast provinces of the realm, whom trie 
 monarch might well exterminate without risk of loss 
 to himself as they refuse to recognize the royal authority 
 living apart from his other subjects and obeying laws 
 of their own. 
 
 Now, it cannot be doubted that at one time the 
 Jews w^ere a nation. But their political nationality came 
 to an end wdien the state and temple fell. Certainly 
 wdien Bar Kokba's rise against Hadrian was quenched 
 in a torrent of martyr blood. I am within the bounds 
 of truth when I say that wdth the crushing of this last 
 rebellion against Rome and fate, Jewish political na- 
 tionality changed from being an actual fact into a po- 
 tential hope, sustaining perhaps the people in the dis- 
 persion by a ray of light recalling departed glory in 
 the- vision of future restoration. And this vision took 
 on all the intenser glow because the nations would not 
 admit into their nationality the scattered members of 
 the extinct Jewish political nationality. In liberal 
 pulpits, the story is popular which puts the blame on 
 the Jew that the process of assimilation has been re- 
 tarded, as it was he that refused to plunge into the 
 mightier current of national life flooding and flowing 
 round about him. This view is a wanton perversion 
 
 12 
 
of the actual facts. The Jews long before their state 
 had tumbled had made the honest effort in certain sec- 
 tions of the world to sink their political nationality into 
 the mightier stream of the national life by which they 
 were surrounded. Greek Judaism had arisen even when 
 the temple was still standing. The Jews in Alexandria 
 had become so thoroughly Greek that for them Hebrew 
 idioms and the concepts expressed by them had almost 
 lost intelligibility. They were Greeks in custom^ Greeks 
 in sympathy, Greeks in ambition. The only line of 
 cleavage between them and their Greek neighbors was 
 religion. If in the medieval days the Jews did not 
 follow this example, theirs is not to blame. Medieval 
 society pretended to rest on the pillars of the Christian 
 church. This position of necessity barred out the non- 
 Christian. The Jew had to be excluded; he had to be 
 crowded back ; he was forced to become an empire within 
 the empire^ a society within society. The Ghetto arose 
 with all that implies; but it was not the Jew who pri- 
 marily enclosed it with impassable walls. 
 
 Perhaps one modification must be made. There was 
 an element in Jewish thought that made for meeting 
 half way this intention of medieval society. Talmudism 
 erected its bulwarks; the Talmudic scheme fortified t'le 
 ramparts. It drew the line between the Jew and the 
 non-Jew effectively. But this Talmudism, upon closer 
 inspection, will reveal itself largely influenced by the 
 tendencies without Judaism. It was devised for defense, 
 rather than for defiance. It preserved because the world 
 plotted to destroy Judaism. The distinction must be 
 kept in mind between disappearance and assimilation. 
 To destroy the Jew and silence his spiritual message was 
 indeed the ambition of the medieval church and state. 
 This conspiracy the Jew had to resist and thwart, for 
 
 13 
 
the sake of tlio spiritual protest which it was his to 
 point; and Tahniidism served this purpose, though in- 
 cidentally it culminated in a rigid system of segregation 
 assumed by the Jew. Exclusion was necessary if Juda- 
 ism was to be preserved in the conditions then pre- 
 vailing. But when the nineteenth century dawned the 
 Jew himself hastened to lay low the walls; it was the 
 Jew, in German}^, in France, in England, that in- 
 sisted upon being reco,gnized as one of this modem po- 
 litical nation. The modern. nations after the French 
 and American revolutions emancipated themselves from 
 the thought that credal religion was their fundamental 
 support. The modern nations are not Christian in the 
 technical sense of the world; therefore, they do not by 
 sheer logic exclude the non-Christian, be he Jew, Mo- 
 hammedan, Buddist, Agnostic, or atheist. The moment 
 the world had weaned itself of the medieval conceit the 
 Jew made ready to step out of his segregation. He 
 was certain that political JeAvish nationalism was an 
 anachronism. ITnder this convictioij, he demanded his 
 rights as a citizen of the new states. Tlie outcome of 
 this agitation was the gradual emancipation, as it is 
 called, of the Jews in modern Europe. The recognition 
 of the right of the Jew to citizenship, with all that it 
 implies, was from the very first regarded as axiomatic 
 in our own dearly beloved America. 
 
 Modem nationalism, however, has been at work to 
 undo what Eicsser and his yokemates achieved. The 
 nationalism of the medieval days was religious in t*^^ - 
 ture. The new nationalism is not religious, it is racial. 
 Its cry is ; France for the French ; Germany for 
 the Germans ; America for the Americans But who i^ 
 French? Who German? Who American? In France, 
 in Germany, they reason that race and nation are ex- 
 
 14 
 
cliano-eable terms. Therefore the Germau nationalists 
 in theory identify German with and limit its scope to 
 Teuton, though if the test were a^Dplied to the German 
 j^eople of to-day, very few would be found to square with 
 the restrictive definition. Though Treitzschke and oth- 
 ers have done their best to spread the erroneous theory, 
 the German nation is not Teutonic. The Teutonic by* no 
 means is numerically the preponderating element. Still 
 the theory served to cloak in patriotic guise the desire 
 to expel the Jew. Here was semblance of justification 
 for the insistence that a Jew cannot be a German ; a Jew 
 cannot be a true Frenchman. 
 
 "What in the presence of this prejudice against the 
 Jew, a prejudice based upon modern, nationalism, is the 
 duty of the Jew? I for my part do not scruple to declare 
 it to be our all the more sacred obligation to reject the 
 specious theory. Jewish nationalism adopts the fun- 
 damental contention and is therefore, a dangerous in- 
 dulgence to be guarded against. 
 
 The saddest feature is that the Jew has himself caught 
 the infection. The Jew has himself been led astray by 
 the glittering generalities of nationalism; and we have 
 be-en blessed by a renaissance of Jewish nationalism, 
 vulgarly known as Zionism. If that movement were 
 merely a concerted attem]ot to ease the fate and lot 
 of the Eussian, Eoumanian, or Galician Jews, none of 
 us could object. But it spurns to be philanthropic. 
 It pretends to stand for the consummation of the 
 Jewish destiny. It is based upon the assumption that 
 the Jew to be Jew must belong to the Jewish nation. 
 So great has been the fatal influence of this doctrine 
 that men who thirty years ago were in the lead of 
 those that insisted upon the de-nationalization of Juda- 
 ism, to-day have become enthusiastic, fanatical adher- 
 
 15 
 
cnts and advocates of Zionism even in America. Tlio 
 onl}^ excuse for this is the desperate disillusioning that 
 has come upon humanit_y, and upon the Jew; the 
 universal despair of ideals. This JeAvish nationalism 
 is the acknowledgment that all our hopes and all our 
 visions of a humanity based upon other elements than 
 force, are chimerical. The Jew must not fall into the 
 error of the nationalistic anti-Semite. We can under- 
 stand the motives of a young German Jew if he heeds 
 the call of the Zionists, for in Germany, contrary to 
 law and to constitution, he is after all only a German 
 by tolerance, a German deprived of certain privileges, 
 while every obligation is laid on him. Pie is not per- 
 mitted to become a commissioned officer of the army 
 whether in the active service or in the reserve ranks. 
 The judiciary career is but rarely open to him ; if he 
 prepares himself for an academic profession he finds 
 the possibilities few, no matter what his excellence 
 might be. Everywhere he rushes up against a dead 
 wall, on the stones of wliich he finds written: "A Jew 
 is only a German conditionally; not a full German.'^ 
 And yet these young Jewish Germans crave the full 
 measure of national life. They are l)urnin,2: with the 
 fever of patriotism which demands satisfaction and is 
 refused opportunity. As Germany seems to deny them 
 the full and free scope it is but natural though it is sad 
 that they turn to the East, and under the spell of a 
 vision grand and noble, believe that there lies the na- 
 tional destiny of the Jew, and there the field for pa- 
 triotic culture. But here in America we have even not 
 this dim shadow of an excuse. There is no call for 
 Zionism in America, except that Zionism which is 
 under the consecration of philanthropy, and would help 
 the millions of Jews in Eussia to a better future, to a 
 
 16 
 
nobler opportunity to lead a decent life. Political 
 Zionism is absolutely insufferable in America. Have we 
 not a nation? We have one. Let those that deny this 
 weigh their words. They ought to be ashamed of their 
 argument, that even in America the Jew is only a 
 second class citizen. "What of it if we have social arro- 
 gance to meet? What of it if our sons are not eligible 
 for the secret college fraternities? AYliat of it if some 
 snobs pretending to greater culture would look down 
 upon us as not worthy of associating with them? I 
 am conceited enough to believe that he who holds me 
 unworthy of association with him is not worthy of asso- 
 ciation with me. Where I am excluded, the distinction 
 of the exclusion is mine. It is the coward that whines ; 
 it is the fool that complains. What of it? Think of 
 it! If Jesus, their Savior, as tliey call him, were 
 to visit them, he would have to be excluded from their 
 hotels and clubs, for he was a Jew. If St. Paul was to 
 reappear on earth, St. Paul, whose words their pulpits 
 reiterate as the foundation of their creed, he could not 
 register in a hotel that does not cater to Hebrew pat- 
 ronage. The best men would be excluded, and the purest 
 women, better men and purer women than are among 
 the would-be nobility of anti-Semitic conceits. 
 
 The fact is the Jew in America has a nation. And 
 in saying this I do not refer to the fact that once in a 
 while a professional Hebrew is put on a polyglot po- 
 litical ticket, that one of my race, "a Hebrew states- 
 man," or one of my religion is nominated for some 
 office or other. In saying that we Jews in America 
 have no excuse for Zionism, I do not even refer to 
 the fact that in our Senate Jews have sat; as even 
 now one whose father was a member of my first con- 
 gregation in Baltimore has been elected Senator of 
 
 17 
 
the great State of Maryland, a man who while reli- 
 giously no longer in association with the Jews, has 
 never tried to evade the circumstance that he is to all 
 intents and purposes a Jew, one who has never alloAved 
 any one to throw slurs upon the character of the Jew 
 without challenging him to substantiate the charge by 
 evidence that could not be disputed. Even if we 
 had not a single Senator of Hebrew birth, if we had 
 not a single representative in Congress of Jewish origin, 
 even if we had not a single constable, or something 
 of that sort in this city or elsewhere to our credit, if 
 at election time none would approach us and say, 
 "Kun for office," and if you run you get the Jewish 
 vote and my support/' if none of the party managers 
 would believe, and they should not believe it, the story 
 of the artful deceiver who tells them to nominate 
 this or that ''Hebrew" because the nomination will fetch 
 the "Jewish vote ;" if none of the party managers ever 
 advertised in our Jewish papers so-called, my own in- 
 cluded, still I should say the Jew in America has no 
 right to pretend that he has no nationality. We have 
 a nationality, it is the American. Let us be careful not 
 to blur this truth. We are often careless in speech. We 
 sometimes speak of Americans as though we were not 
 Americans. How often have I been told "Doctor, we 
 were proud of you to-day. You had many Americans 
 in the audience!" As a rule, I have only Americans in 
 my audience. You are Americans. I am an' American. 
 Let us wean ourselves of this loose, slipshod expression 
 which admits what is untrue, and what the Jew should 
 not admit in this country. Mordecai in the novel is a 
 patriotic Jew. He saves the king's life; he renders 
 the state a great service. Confronted by the prejudice 
 invoked by racial nationalism, it is the Jew's highest 
 
 18 
 
duty to emphasize that as a Jew he has no distinct Jew- 
 ish nationality. 
 
 Let ns then carry home the consciousness and into 
 our very ambition the conviction that in the presence 
 of Aryan racialism, which is brutalism gone to seed, 
 the Jews must have a care not to fall a prey to Sem- 
 itic arrogance. In the face of brutalizing non-Jewish 
 nationalism the Jew of America, at least, need not fear. 
 Kis nation is none other than that over which waves — 
 may God grant that it wave forever— the Star Span- 
 gled Banner of Liberty, Justice and Law. Modern 
 Hamans have made the story of Esther vital again. 
 Esther may never have lived. I have no doubt, and I 
 do not hesitate to say so, that the Book belongs to fic- 
 tion. It is a novel, but like many a novel it puts truth 
 much more strongly than ever reality could express it. 
 A real Haman, who lived once and died then, what he 
 to us ? A real Esther, that was once Queen and then died, 
 what she to us? A real Mordecai, that once sat at the 
 Queen's gate, that once refused to bow to Haman, and 
 once brought upon all the Jews the recoil of his stubborn 
 refusal to show common courtesy; a real Mordecai who 
 once became the successor of the dethroned favorite of 
 the King, what he to us? The Book of Esther is so 
 deeply pathetic and so eternally interesting because it 
 speaks of tendencies and illustrates motives which never 
 localized here and there, alas, have been universal, and 
 are modern to-day. But the hour has grown late. I 
 must leave for another occasion the analysis of the 
 two other counts in the bill of indictment drawn by 
 our enemies. That our morality is inferior and our 
 religion the parent of our inferior morality, is among 
 their claims. This accusation is as baseless as are the 
 other charges. 
 
 19 
 
I had hoped wlicn a younpj man that the day would 
 come when in a Reform Congregation the Purim feast 
 might be ignored. But that day has alas, not yet 
 dawned. Yet is the world full of the venom of Haman ; 
 yet is the world full of weak men of the stamp and 
 character of Ahasuerus; yet is the world in need of 
 the services, of Esther, and of Mordccai. And because 
 that need is pressing, the story and the feast have place 
 even in the scheme of this radical Jewish Reform Con- 
 gregation. Might Purim bring to you Joy, buf also 
 the deeper appeal to meditate and ponder, to reflect 
 and to resolve. Prejudice cannot b© fought with preju- 
 dice, but it can be met by courage; it can be defeated 
 by love. When they hate, let us love; when they mis- 
 judge, let us be careful to judge truthfully. Wlien 
 they invoke brutal convictions, let our souls be under 
 the consecration of a liigher and nobler faith. Amen. 
 
 20 
 
No. 18. 
 
 TKe Concordance of Judaism 
 and Americanism 
 
 AN ahhv^kss 
 
 By 
 EMII^ G. HIRSCH 
 
 The Reform Advocate 
 
 Bloch & Newwan, Publishers 
 
 204 Dearborn Street, .... Chicago, III. 
 
THE CONCORDANCE OF JUDAISM AND 
 AMERICANISM. 
 
 A.X ADDRESS PREACHED AT THE MEMORIAL CELEBRATION 
 IX SIXAI TEMPLE, SUNDAY, NOV. 26, 1905. 
 
 BY EMIL G. HIRSCH. 
 
 ^^^lere the Canadian Pacific, that mighty miracle of 
 modern man^s daring and doing, winds its ever narrow- 
 ing embrace of steel arms around the giant frame and 
 then the snow-hooded brow of the mountain sentries 
 mounting the guard over the Rockies' midcontinental 
 bastion, the wondering traveler wheeled along this impe- 
 rial highway's upward coil in dramatic suddenness is 
 brought face to face with one of the most striking exhibi- 
 tions of N'ature's curious capriciousness. Hbwever much 
 he may have been impressed with the defiant boldness 
 that reckoned not the menace of the roaring canyons 
 over which bridge and span are thrown in proud uncon- 
 cern, or with the stupendous assumption of se- 
 curity that holds in contempt the perils of preci- 
 pices along which the roadbed skirts with ten- 
 acious grit; when at the great divide he notices 
 how the chance interval of a hair's breadth be- 
 tween the peak's wrinkles determines the direction of 
 the water-rills and the leaping cascades, he is stirred 
 to reflection as bv no other observation. Twin children 
 
of the clouds, cradled in one nursery, the raindrops are 
 here bidden separate. One rushes on to his destiny, 
 meeting in his descent the morning's sun, the other has- 
 tens to his goal in the van of the evening's approach. 
 Spun on the same loom, one silvery ribbon unwinds 
 its broadening folds until they are tangled in the At- 
 lantic's mightier nettings;, the other unbobbins its 
 stretching lengths to festoon the slopes inclining toward 
 the Pacific. Though he know the law which compels 
 one of heaven's tears to seek its grave in the birth- 
 chamber of the daystar and the other to hasten to its 
 funeral in advance of the sinking sun, at the impres- 
 sive recognition of the phenomenon in the concrete, the 
 observant witness is involuntarily oppressed by the 
 consciousness that similar "accidents" determine the di- 
 rection of men's gropings and enforce divergency of 
 paths leading to different and widely-separated destinies. 
 But this .depressing obsession soon yields to the inspir- 
 ing certainty that only in the seeming whim and chance 
 preside over the alotling of our fortune. Closer atten- 
 tion to the intention which underlies Nature's dividing 
 decree soon will reveal that underneath the superficial 
 divergence is operative concordance of duty. Both 
 wateixlrops that at the line must part from each other 
 are commissioned to one ancl the same task. It is theirs 
 to coax forth flowers.- to fertilize field and forest. Both 
 are messengers and ministers of life-. And again when 
 they shall have reached their respective goals, be it the 
 sea which laps the Eastern shores or that which sings 
 the lullaby to the Western states, the miracle of the 
 resurrection which awaits them will wing both alike 
 to new upward flight and on the heights their divided 
 destinies Avill finally converge. Seemingly doomed to 
 eternal separation, snowflakes and dewdrops that part 
 
 4 
 
company at the divide are foreordained to identity of 
 obligation. 
 
 Thus when closer analysis unfolds this ethical purpose 
 which, cloaked or clear, is always fundamental in the 
 Universe and which is never dissipated even when the 
 factoring process seems to reduce the all to incoherent 
 fragments, caprice of division is at once lifted to the 
 potency of planned appointment. Accident under this 
 view takes on the consecration of vocation. Differences 
 are blotted out in the recognition that they are means 
 to an end, and in the prevision of this end divergence 
 of i)aths sinks out of sight while identity of responsi- 
 bility which neutralizes all variance of direction looms 
 up large. Xame the watersheds which force division 
 and divergence upon men what you will, race, religion, 
 nationalit}^, at the great divide the space which separates 
 is infinitesimal. These channels through which human- 
 ity runs on to its goal are means to a common end. On 
 all them that along these divergent paths apparently 
 tend apart in contrary directions, one common burden 
 is imposed. Theirs is the equality of function under the 
 variety and difference of equipment. Like the river 
 systems draining into different oceans, the various and 
 differently endowed components of humanity are ap- 
 pointed to fill eartli with life, ever enriching and deep- 
 ening and broadening. This conception reconciles di- 
 versity with unity. It sees in the polychrome spectrum 
 only unfolding white light. 
 
 Little dower of imagination, I hold, is competent to 
 apply the pathos and poetry of the watershed's influence 
 upon the direction of the raindrop's ambition, to tlift 
 symphonic theme of this memorial day's chorus. At 
 first hearing, its jubilant notes seem to carry the invi- 
 tation to remember differences. It is the landing of 
 
Jews that it commemorates. It seems to emphasize 
 those distinctions that set off the Jew from liis neigh- 
 bor. Or again if stress be Laid on the country's name 
 whose hospitality these earliest immigrants of Jewish 
 origin chunicd, the intention of our synagogal eelebva- 
 tion may be misunderstood as planned to throw on the 
 screen the peculiarities of American Israel, enlarged out 
 of all proportion and thus invigorate the American 
 Jew's insistence upon beini; accorcled a distinct position 
 of his own in the common household of Israel. 
 ^ But give this day's jubilee-overture a second hearing ! 
 If it be true — and it is — that man is microcosmic repro- 
 duction of the Universe's macrocosmos, then it is equally 
 beyond all doubt that in the plan of God nations and 
 peoples are called to be microcosmic illustrations of the 
 plan of the macrocosmic humanity. To the American 
 nation ^vas assigned task and opportunity to exemplify 
 essential unity notwithstanding the influence of the 
 various watersheds at wiiich the lines of descent diverge. 
 Almost all the races of the planet have made this land 
 their trysting ground. Hither they have brought the best 
 and strongest which it was theirs to develop. Eeligion 
 in this country re-enacts the Pentacostal outpouring; 
 the flaming tongues that token of the spirit speak their 
 message in varied tones and widely differing dialects. 
 Social customs, the ripples from many distant sources, 
 give color and mobility to home and exclusive circles. 
 Even in the press anel on the platform, in our streets 
 and villages the confusion O'f languages is docmuented. 
 This exceeding abundance of variety constitutes one of 
 the secrets of this nation's nervous vitality. Apparent 
 discordance results under the consecration of patriot- 
 ism in effective harmony. True, this morning's festal 
 reveille stirs to glad reflection only a little more than 
 
 6 
 
one of the eighty millions of God's children that call 
 America mother or spouse. Yet, it is not in conflict 
 with, nay, it is in confirmation of America's distinc- 
 tive genius that the commemorative occasion addresses 
 its call to one alone of its many components and con- 
 tributors. E plurihus unum formulates a truth, radi- 
 antly visible in the vision of this day. By rejoicing as 
 Jews we are accentuating our Americanism. 
 
 And in similar manner the pride of our Americanism 
 which possesses our heart and is yearning for expression 
 today, is not a protest against, it is a proclamation of 
 our fidelity to our Judaism. Like America, Judaism 
 has been appointed to pattern the richer diversities of 
 polychrome human life. Its aspects are many ; its vocal- 
 izations numerous. Catholic Israel wears neither the 
 uniform of military barracks nor the livery of the 
 penitentiary. Its is Joseph's coat of many colors. This 
 continent has augmented the prophecies and proclama- 
 tions of Judaism by another variation. This new artic- 
 ulation again is not rigid. It is vital and therefore 
 flexible. In this its elasticity and vitality American 
 Judaism only conforms to the historic plasticity of Pan- 
 Judaism and carries it out to fuller productivity. It 
 looks like an accident that we were directed at the 
 watershed Americanward while millions of Ijrothers were 
 sent into Russia. To our lot fell American citizenship, 
 to theirs slave service in the house of bondage more op- 
 pressive than ever was Mizraim. But that "accident" 
 signifies duty. In emphasizing now our Americanism 
 we vow to be true all the more devotedly to the obliga- 
 tion that our Judaism impo-=es. 
 
 In fact, he is ignorant of the implications of Amer- 
 icanism and Judaism both who would hold that between 
 them towers a mountain range decreeing and enforcing 
 
 7 
 
their divergent separation. The contrast not to say 
 conflict between tlicni, i l^now, is commonly summarized 
 in the statement that America names the civilization of 
 liopeful prospect, Judlaism that of regretful retrospect. 
 The latter is a tearful memory, the former a joyful an- 
 ticipation. Tradition is Judaism's store; outlook Amer- 
 ica's strength. Xo more arrogant misconception was ever 
 coined than this artfully pointed antithesis. Judaism is, 
 if anything, the one religion of impatient prospect and 
 ecstatic prevision of the unborn to-morrow. America 
 has its traditions as clearly determinative as are the 
 influences of the past that anchor Judaism to its his- 
 toric moorijigs. The traditions of Amei'ica reach baciv 
 further than the discover}^ of the continent. Our 
 jurisprudence is grounded on the old common law of 
 England. And in these precolonial traditions which 
 have been among the most prolific stimuli of American 
 thought, conduct and character, Judaism has had a 
 dominant part. In the "May-flower" our Bible crossed 
 the Atlantic. At Plymouth Eock in sober reality the 
 Pentateuch was recognized as one of the inspirations 
 of the young commonwealth. The Puritans were, in- 
 deed, more Hebraic than were the Jews who landed 
 thirty-six years later. Narrow were they, but their 
 narrowness was ransomed by their strength. Serious 
 were they, but their seriousness elowered them with the 
 fortitude without which none may hope to yoke un- 
 tamed naturo to his purpo^ses. Puritan Hebrewism 
 alone enabled the pilgrims to exercise dominion over 
 the wilds of their new homo. This puritan spirit 
 was nursed at the breast of Jewish literature. It was 
 the gift laid by old Judaism into the cradle of this 
 new civilization. It had share in preparing the advent 
 of the era of independence, as in the thinking of the 
 
 8 
 
men that later phrased our political documents un- 
 doubtedly Old Testament principles had had determi- 
 nating influence. 
 
 One who can pierce through verbal husk to inner 
 kernel can harbor no doubt on the essential concord- 
 ance of Americanism and Judaism. The stronger the 
 Jew in us, the more loyal the American in us will 
 grow to be. AVhat is the fundamental announcement 
 of Judaism? You say the "unity of Ood." This 
 may and may not name the characteristic element. 
 What if the One God were conceived of as a dark frown- 
 ing despot? There have been those among our enemies 
 to misconstrue in this wise the meanins^ of our mono- 
 theism. They have said that the Jew in declaring 
 his God to be One proclaims the rulership of an auto- 
 crat whose caprice alone tempered by bribes is the 
 final arbiter of the world's and the human race's fate. 
 This monotheism, they proceed to exj)lain, is there- 
 fore differentiated from polytheism only in its numerial 
 notation. I adduce this misrepresentation for the pur- 
 pose of demonstrating the advisability of cpialifying 
 our definition. Ethical is the attribute usually in- 
 troduced to distinguish the monotheism of Judaism. 
 But what does the phrase signify? A German thinker 
 of fame tells us that all religion is anthropology. In 
 the doctrine concerning man flowers into view the 
 true content of our consciousness O'f God's all per- 
 vading, all sustaining presence. One Go'd is the highest 
 expression of our conviction that as every man is 
 created in the image of God every man by his l)irth- 
 right is the equal of every other man. Everv man as 
 pai'taking of divinity has a value which 'is indepen- 
 dent of all the accidents due to the action of the 
 (Watersheds. ' Man having la value inherent in his 
 
 9 
 
luniianity has personality and therefore has no price. 
 'J'hings nmy be purchased, persons cannot. The value 
 of man is inexpressible in ieTnis of the market. Men 
 are not like the products of mine or mill oquivalented 
 in coin. Low or lefty every man incarnates some- 
 tliing inalienable which is not affected by circumstance. 
 In this something roots his free sovereignty. 
 
 Is not America's political creed the practical execu- 
 tion and activization of these fundamental conceptions 
 of Judaism? Judaism\s philosophy spreads the basis 
 whereon rests the political practice of America. N^o 
 other justification is there for the assumption that 
 men are born free and equal than the conception of 
 man as the ' incarnation of the divine, his personality 
 constituting his unpurchasable worth and l)cing the 
 exponent of the One in wdiose image all alike are 
 created. 
 
 This inalienable freedom of man is the freedom to 
 live out the law of his being. Law and freedom are 
 not contraries; they are complementaries. Judaism 
 the religion of freedom was of necessity also that of 
 the Law. To whatever degree the Talmudic system 
 through micrology may have mechanicalized the Law, 
 none who understands the character of Judaism but 
 must insist that liberty to activize the freedom which 
 it posits as inherent in man's participation in divinity, 
 postulates submission to the supreme law of moral maj- 
 esty and final siipi-cmacy. The law of the moral order is 
 im])erfectly ex])ressed in the self-given law of state 
 and society. Law is liberty potential ized, li])erty is 
 law actualized. The American's passion for liberty 
 vouchsafed by law and for law grounded in liberty 
 is foreshadowed and sanctified in the teachings of 
 Judaism. 
 
 10 
 
But the congruence of Judaism and Americanism 
 extends further. Judaism postulates co-operation and 
 co-ordination, as the principle of organized society. 
 In the chapter all the richer in truth because it echoes 
 old mythology, which records the creation of man, 
 the duty and destiny of this last of God's creative acts 
 is defined as rulership over all the preceding works 
 of God. "They/' in the plural shall have dominion, 
 is the phraseology of the account. In other words one 
 man is incompetent to fulfill this appointment. No 
 man may be spared in the realization of this aim. 
 through co-operation and co-ordinafion of effort and 
 purport::) in ever larger .scope the divinely decreed 
 destiny will be attained. Our political method is 
 co-opeiative and establishes the co-ordination of the 
 various organs. Our national constitution is often 
 described as a noble compromise. It had to be this 
 as -exponential of the principles under which alone 
 freedom and law can be made effective, viz., co- 
 operation and co-ordination, But not only that 
 written charter, the very life of the nation's plan of 
 self-government is imbued with these principles and 
 informed bv them. Home autonomv and national 
 authority are the two poles. America begins with the 
 fiee individual, leads him for co-operation with other 
 free individuals, his equals, along ascending steps to 
 come to the town-meeting which then expands into 
 the municipality and county, these autonomous cor- 
 porations growing into the state and the states finally 
 constitutino- the Union. Above the Union the un- 
 written yet wonderfully effective Highest Law, the 
 law not only of this nation but of all nations, the 
 Law which is the outflow of the Moral Order of the 
 Universe, the moral meaning of all humanity's strivings 
 
 11 
 
and stnig;e,les. If the Jewish Commonwealth was a 
 Theocracy, onr government is also in the true sense of 
 the term iheocratic. The implications of the belief in 
 the One God are basic to our democracy. 
 
 Often antagonism is predicated of Judaism as of 
 religion in general to the buoyant energetic spirit of 
 America, its assertive self-conscious self-reliant realism. 
 How far this suspicion ds justified in the case of other 
 religions, it is not for me to verify. Against Judaism 
 the imputation cannot be maintainecl. I know that 
 in some synagogues the conceit has been encouraged 
 which would make of Judaism another scheme of salva- 
 tion, a preparation for and an assurance of immor- 
 tlality. Under this misapprehension, indeed, Judaism 
 would have little sympathy with the realities of this 
 world ; nor would it have any but an indistinct message 
 for this life. But is other-worldlincss the dominant 
 in Judaism's proclamation or the inspiration of its 
 ])rophecy? Clearly not. Judaism would inform this 
 life, this world. It would through its spirit transmute 
 conditions and chariaeters here and now. It was the 
 first to iDray "Thy Kingdom come.'' But this kingdom, 
 this 'Olam. ha-ha was not beyond the cloud. Its portals 
 were not those of the grave. That world to be which 
 is the vision of Israel's hope and faith is this world of 
 ours rectonstituted mider the sanctifying reforming 
 sway of justice, righteousness and love. With justice 
 triumphant, TJghteousness isocialiaed, Judaism hails 
 the advent of the Messianic age when conditions on 
 earth wilt be such that to no man is denied opportunity, 
 to realize his own divinity. Therefore the dominion 
 of religion according to our doctrine is co-extensive 
 with the range of life. Rail out of the plentitude of 
 your prejudices at T'almudic ritualism ! That ritualism 
 
 12 
 
is perhaps the caricature but still the expression of 
 the. vital truth that nothing in life is indifferent to 
 religion. The most trivial acts are tremiendous acts. 
 There is no divide at which the secular parts company 
 from the sacred. Eeligion must be in <ail things or 
 it is in nothing. That misintrepreted phrase "My King- 
 dom is not of this world" as understood by Catholic 
 Christianity and Calvinistic theology, has no place in 
 the dictionary of Judaism. 
 
 Judaism as a religion has concern with commerce 
 ■and industry. It is characteristic of Judaism's realism 
 that on the "tables 'of the law" doctrine preludes 
 dutv. "Thou shalt not steal" was as solemnly thund- 
 ered forth as "I am the Elternal." ' This construction 
 of Judaism as ideal realism, as passion for righting the 
 tilings of this world, as preparation not for death 
 ]mt ioY the perfect, "world to be" the perfect state 
 and social order of the future, is not new. It is the 
 liurdcn of the prophets' censure and caution; it is the 
 content of Pentateuchal legislative provision. The 
 E^abbis express this conviction when they observe that 
 the Torah was not given (to the Angels and describe 
 the dramatic reception of Moses in the council-chamber 
 of God when come to claim for earth the Torah. The 
 angels objected. But at the bidding of the Holy One, 
 the son of Amram proves that angels need not the 
 liaw ; that its commands apply to men and earth alone. 
 How far have they strayed from genuine Judaism 
 who would have the Jewish pulpit be' silent on the 
 injustices of earth, the maladjustment of society and 
 under the plea that Temple and Synagogue must be 
 sacred to religion would liave religion shrink into a 
 • contrivance to arouse pleasurable emotions in the wor- 
 shiper, ecstatic sensuous Ibregleams of heaven's felici- 
 
 13 
 
ties; into an ajiothecary's laboratory where patent drugs 
 arc concocted for the easing of heart-ache, or opiates 
 arc held in readiness for the dulling of grief and pain 
 at the death of dear ones. Religion consoles and eases 
 but only when it stimulates to action when it quickens 
 conscience and 'directs aright conduct. Ikmeniber 
 great Eabbis exposed the iniquity of negro slavery from 
 their pulpits. Eemember that our greatest Eeform 
 preacher David Einhorn used to say ^^no politics in 
 religion but by all means religion in politics.'^ Negro 
 slavery has l)een wiped out, but alas ! other and worse 
 slavery still prevails in this world of ours. .Shall they 
 who hear the clanking of the chains forego speaking 
 though their old Jewish ]3rayer-book praises God thrice 
 daily for having led His people from bondage to 
 slavery? Widows and orphans are robbed. Does only 
 to the miserable sneak thief that picks our pocket apply 
 "Thou shalt not steal !" and not as solemnly to the 
 shrewd manipulators who have not scrupled to juggle 
 with trust funds, the accumulations of the nation's sav- 
 ings, the sacrifices of heads of families solicitous that 
 their wives and children shall not be left to the cruel 
 mercy of a cold selfish world? Ah, they know not their 
 Judaism who would have it be a conventional badge 
 of spiritual — God save the mark! — respectability. No, 
 Judaism is for this world ! Its genius of hopeful 
 realism has syllabled the spiritual message which a 
 people like that of the United States is in need of. 
 Because its kingdom is not beyond the clouds but a 
 vision of justice and freedom realized in the tents of 
 man, Judaism strikes the note that sets vibrating the 
 heart of America similarly attuned to energetic realism, 
 similarly tender to the sufferer from injustice, similarly 
 
 14 
 
hopeful of the future dawn of universal peace and 
 liberty. 
 
 Our reform Judaism has come to understand in 
 fullest measure this concordance of its own genius 
 with that of the institutions and the soul of America. 
 Vre feel that jf anywhere on God's footstool our Mes- 
 sionic vision will he made real, it is in this land where 
 a new humanity seems destined to arise. Xot to Jeru- 
 salem are our eyes turned, but to God! ^Ve cannot 
 honestly declare that we are here in exile. We cannot 
 honestly petition that we be led back to Palestine as our 
 country. We have a country which is ours by the right of 
 our being identified with its destinies, our being devoted 
 to its welfare, our sharing its trials, eur rejoicing in 
 its triumphs. Two hundred and fifty years has the 
 Jew sojourned in this country. He is not an alien here. 
 His views of liberty and law, of man's inalienable rights 
 and duties hallowed by the sublimities of his religion, 
 are in creative concordance with the distinctive princi- 
 ples pillaring American civilization. 
 
 N'ot an alien, the Jewish American has the right to 
 ask that now when in darkest Europe humanity is out- 
 raged, this, his land, remain hospitable to all that would 
 escape from the hell of persecution and intolerance and 
 like the Pilgrim fathers of Puritan faith and the first 
 Jews, the vanguard of the million and two hundred 
 thousand American Jews, would make this land their 
 home. The Jew in America, as we have been told this 
 verv morning, has been faithful to his pledges. The com- 
 munity at large was not burdened in consequence of its 
 generous and just policy of the open door. AATiatever 
 may come now, we shall assume our res^wnsibility with- 
 (Tiit haggling. 
 
 We may "claim to have been originators and discov- 
 
 15 
 
crcrs in one field, that of the phih-inthropics. But I 
 fear the staff of the leader is ahout to fall from our 
 hands. We have become wedded too Ijlindly to in- 
 stitutionalism. It is the line of least resistance, I 
 know; but in moral life the line of least resistance is 
 always of evil. Individualization is costly and our 
 local institutions plead for more liberal support. The 
 middle class does its duty. Of those that are below 
 the middle line, in justice nothing can be asked. There 
 are, however, men in this city who through the oppor- 
 tunities offered them in iVmerica have come into pos- 
 session of more than what they or theirs can ever need, 
 who have received as reward for their labor, I grant, 
 large returns from society. They now must remember 
 that they are the stewarcls of their surplus, not its ir- 
 responsible owners. It is for them to place our chari- 
 ties in this city on a sound basis. Is there one of this 
 class who may urge that if he doubles his subscription 
 of $2,000 a year he will suffer want, or his capital be 
 impaired? Xone of them spends his income, and some 
 of them cannot spend even the interest on their yearly 
 income. To them is addressed the appeal of this 
 day. I have but scant affection for the very rich Jews 
 of N'ew York, and they have no patience with me, I 
 dare say. But whatever arrogance they may display ^ 
 an their dealings with rabbi or minister, they have rec- 
 ognized what they owe to the community. The New 
 York institutions are supported in the main by the 
 richest men. That is the right way. The men of 
 modest means, th-)se that make an honorable living, 
 may and should contribute whatever they can spare, 
 but they are not able to carry the load. It is the clear 
 duty of ten or twelve men in this city to carry the main 
 burden. They need only elouble their yearly sub- 
 
 16 
 
scriptions. This .will ruin none; it will help ns all. 
 That should be tlieir way of celebrating this, our me- 
 morial hour. Think of what you were when you came 
 here. How much did you have? One of you has told 
 me that his wiiole assets consisted of a basket of ap- 
 ples, and he had to dispose of them quickly, for one of 
 the stock had begun to rot. That was his beginning. 
 Vrhat has been his success after this deal in apples? 
 You would know if I dared mention his name. Yet 
 his experience is typical. Will he claim that if he 
 doubles his subscription to the charities, large in the 
 luni]) as now it is, that his business will be ruined, 
 his children will have to face want, his grandchildren 
 will be mercilessly exposed to the winter's cruel blasts? 
 Is he not able to repay in this slight way the bounty 
 which American life has placed under his control as 
 the honestly won reward for his honestly performed 
 work ? Would it have been possible for him in Europe 
 to rise as he has risen here? Is it not his duty to make 
 the rise of others easier? 
 
 We must prepare for the other contingencies that are 
 impending. I personally do not believe that De Witte's 
 promises will be realized. Of course these, my oft 
 expressed misgivings, are due to my not having been 
 invited to kow-tow to De Witte; if I had been taken 
 along I should trumpet to-day a different tune. That 
 IS one of the many truthful things circulated about 
 me; let him who wishes, if it affords him pleasure, 
 construe my opinions in this wise. I believe I coulcl 
 have seen the Eussian envoy by merely sending him a 
 request for an audience. The Eabbi of Sinai Congrega- 
 tion ceases to be an obscure individual at times and 
 takes on representative character even if he be not at 
 the head of a secret order or a magnate of Wall Street. 
 
 17 
 
I do not believe that the poor premier even if lie have 
 the will has the power to redeem his pledge. We must 
 face the sad situation as it is. L myself^ an immigrant, 
 and you, the chiUlren of immigrants, if not immigrants 
 yourselves, must jDrepare to receive new thousands of 
 immigrants from Eussia, which is a hell, from Rou- 
 mania, which is an inferno. We must ransom the 
 pledge given by those who settled 250 years ago, that 
 "none of ours shall be a burden on the community.'' In 
 this awful calamity all American Jewry must band and 
 stand together. It is a duty we owe to Judaism and 
 to America ; one of the many obligations in which our 
 Judaism emphasizes wliat our Americanism tokens; 
 in which our Americanism! proves that it is harmoni- 
 ously attuned to the most profound and most solemn 
 declarations of our Judaism. The flag shall welcome 
 the new pilgrims, and our faith shall make them know 
 that their tottering steps shall be supported and their 
 trembling hands shall be upheld after the terrible af- 
 flictions laid on them in the land of their birth, the land 
 of despotic brutality, of dehumanized barbarism. 
 
 Great is the joy which may possess our heart. Our 
 escutcheon as Americans is without stain. We have 
 had a share in the making of this nation. In the mine 
 and in the mill, at the lathe and at' the loom, in count- 
 ing room and council chamber the Jew has been at 
 work for two centuries and a half for his America. 
 He has sentried his nation's camp; he has been in the 
 mast's lookout on his nation's ships; he has gone out 
 to battle and he was among them that fell at the firing 
 line. Officer, private, whatever his rank, when the na- 
 tion asked for life or limb, he did not hesitate to offer 
 the sacrifice. In institutions of learning the Jew has 
 m,iade his mark. In the walks of enterprise his individ- 
 
 18 
 
uality has been felt as a telling potency in the de- 
 velopment of the greater aims of American energy. 
 In the professions he stands high ; on the bench he has 
 often had representation, of the best and by the best; 
 in the pulpits of the land the Jew has not been in the 
 last and lowest ranks. In Boston, I believe, these days 
 they will commemorate Garrison's services. This offers 
 an opportunity to dwell once more upon facts often 
 overlooked, and therefore all the more worthy of being 
 pointed out, that in that struggle against slavery none 
 was more eager, none was more enthusiastic than the 
 leader of American Eeform Judaism. And in evidence 
 how intensely wedded to liberty is Judaism, his voice 
 found strong support in the pulpit of the most ortho- 
 dox Portuguese synagogue of Philadelphia. Keady to 
 die, if necessary, among those that spoke against 
 slavery, at risk of life and position, were David Ein- 
 horn and Sabbato Morais. 
 
 We have earned the right to call this our country. 
 The future will ijlace new solemn obligations upon us 
 for the country's sake and as Judaism's consecration; 
 we shall not shirk our duties. Happy we American 
 Jev/s that have a country. America is ours. We can 
 sing with all others, 
 
 "My country 'tis of thee! sweet land of liberty, 
 Of thee I sing; 
 
 Land where my fathers died, land of our Pilgrims' 
 pride/' 
 
 The watershed separates raindrops and snowflakes 
 to divergent destiny. Pace, religion, birth and condi- 
 tion also seem to elivide. But on the heights the line 
 of separation is thin; and in duty again all difference 
 
 19 
 
of direction is consecrated to* unity of purpose. In 
 our nation no divides but are instrumentalities of 
 service. CJinging to his Judaism, the Jew will be a 
 more strenuous, a more loyal, a more enthusiastic Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 May God bless our country ; keep it in His protection. 
 May His light shine out o'er it. and His peace abide 
 and abound in it. This is the prayer of tlie Jew on 
 this, the Jewish-American anniversary day of joy and 
 solemn resolves. Answer it, God in heaven, in Tliy 
 mercv. Amen, Amen! 
 
 20 
 
REFORM JUDAISM AND UNITARIANISM. 
 
 AX ADDRESS PREACHED BEFORE SIXAI CONGREGATION 
 SUNDAY^ DEC. 17, 1905. 
 
 BY EMIL G. HIRSCH. 
 
 Biblical selection: Jeremiah, xxii. 
 
 A distinction without a difference, many contend, is 
 connoted by the two names, Eeform Jndaism and Uni- 
 tarianism. And this contention appeals to them with 
 all the greater force since the cry has gone np that 
 it were time to lay stress on the nnities and identities 
 of the various religious convictions to the exclusion and 
 obliteration of their variances -and discordances. Cer- 
 tainly none of us l)ut would hail with joy the splendor 
 of the noontide when the complete absence of shadow 
 will indicate that the rays of Truth coincide with 
 the absolute perpendicular. But that hour is still far 
 off. Popular as is the monition to forget differences, 
 deeper thought cannot overlook the circumstance that 
 not all distinctions are superficial. Many of the lines 
 of demarcation between the possessions of close neigh- 
 bors can be ignored only by one ready to sacrifice pre- 
 cious home associations without adequate compensation. 
 Many of the insistences of Judaism which have resulted 
 in keeping the boundary posts in their places are ex- 
 pressive of vital incentives. To abandon them would be 
 tantamount to loss of rich sources of power. We might 
 
 1 
 
do worse than unlearn some of the glib stock phrases 
 of colorless cosmopolitanism. Unity of purpose is not 
 dependent on uniformity of method. Diversity of lan- 
 guage makes for wealth of ideas. Humanity speaking 
 but one tongue would be poorer in poetry at all events, 
 even if in the dusty markets of the world haggling for 
 profit might be facilitated, llcligion, too, may proph- 
 ecy of one ultimate truth and still syllabic its message 
 in different aljDhabets. Eeligions are not the children 
 of accidental caprice. Where their ways part company, 
 historical as often as dogmatic influences have brought 
 about the separation. It is erroneous to hold that be- 
 cause the human heart with its burdens land its joys 
 is the cradle of all religion, all religions are equiv- 
 alent. In their development, some have attained higher 
 altitudes than others. They have not followed one and 
 the same ro'ad, nor tended to the same goal. Some 
 have scaled the heights by paths and under motives pe- 
 culiarly their own. To point out these differences is 
 not a sin against the holy spirit of liberalism. To 
 search for the underlying meaning of these variations is 
 a duty which intellectual indolence alone will shirk. 
 And if it appears that distinctions denote vital princi- 
 ples, to insist that they be neither blurred nor blotted 
 out is a simple act of justice. 
 
 If it were true that no material difference is expressed 
 by the names Judaism and Unitarianism, scant justifi- 
 cation would there be for their dividing retention, in 
 view of the possibility of uniting the two bodies in a 
 wider fellowship, uneler unifying Shibboleth. Liberal 
 though we claim to be, we are not inclined to drop our 
 distinct appellation. Is this mere stubborness on our 
 part? Advantages of a worldly n'ature certainly are 
 not dependent upon our retainnig the designation. The 
 
 2 
 
contrar}' is most painfull}^ true. Is it idle sentiment 
 that prompts our decision? Granted for argument's 
 sake that sentiment determines our attitude, is it not 
 a fact that sentiment such as this, is known to have 
 heen among the most potent forces operative for good in 
 che upward march of humanity's destiny? I for one 
 am ready to bear whatever odium attaches to the dis- 
 inclination to efface this name of ours. For I know 
 its use is justified by its distinct value as a token for 
 certain vital viewpoints, neglected or rejected in the 
 implications of other names carelessly said to be of iden- 
 tical force with it. I am a Jew and not a Unitarian 
 for very weighty reasons which I cannot ignore. 
 
 ■In savingthis I shall omit from the discussion, for 
 the present", the element of l)irth. Its bearing on the 
 problem in issue will be made clear later on. Were 
 theology the decisive factor, the identity of Judaism 
 and Unitarianism might be postulated. Both teach the 
 Unity of God. Both are anti-trinitarian. But theolog}^ is 
 not the supreme index of 'the character of any religion 
 whatsoever; the doctrines concerning man are always 
 primary. Monotheism is a general term under which a 
 vast variety of creeds are subsumed. Trinitarians are 
 as emphatic in claiming for their systems the mon- 
 otheistic note as are Unitarians. On the other hand 
 scholars need not be told that in the presentation of the 
 God-idea in the philosophy of Philo and later in the the- 
 osophy of the Jewish mystics material modifications of 
 unitarian doctrine have been accorded wide latitude. 
 Would we discover the fundamental divergences, we 
 must pay heed to the teachings concerning the purpose 
 and worth of man's life on 'earth. The viewpoint of 
 Judaism in this respect is distinct. Its anthropology 
 sets it apart from all other religious constructions of 
 
 3 
 
life's meaning, whatever concordances may superficially, 
 be suggested by the verbal formulation of its God-belief 
 and that of other fraternities. 
 
 By certain surface indications, the Jew and' the Uni- 
 tarian seem to be assigned to one group. Both were 
 excluded from the church congress convened in the 
 interest of Church Unity a few weeks ago. But in this 
 connection one circumstance is significant. The Jew 
 never dreamt of the possibility of his being invited to 
 participate in the movement. Unitarians accepted their 
 exclusion by no means as a foregone conclusion. They 
 wish to be known as Christians. This insistence on 
 their part upon this name reveals their acceptance of 
 a philosophy of history to which no Jew will subscribe. 
 Of course, for the Unitarian the word Christian carries 
 a connotation altogether other than what it has in 
 the vocabulary of Evangelical and Catholic theologians. 
 For the I'atter, Christian denotes one who accepts the 
 Christ-ship of Jesus; for the former it implies dis- 
 cipleship to Jesus, the man and teacher. The differ- 
 ence is vital. For the Paulinian dogma, the 
 teachings of Jesus, his life and labors while in 
 this mrmdane sphere are of slight importance. 
 His death alone is decisive. The Christ is the 
 sulistituted sacrifice. He is the second Adam ap- 
 pointed to ransom by his blood the children of the first 
 conceived and born in sin, the fatal consequence of their 
 progenitor's (disobedience to God's commandl The 
 sin of the first Adam brought death into the world; 
 the death and resurrection of the second defeated death. 
 They who accept through faith the Christ, participate 
 in the 'atonement. They are saved through God's grace 
 which provided in Christ the vicarious lamb. As 
 redeemed through the blood of Christ, they are Chris- 
 
 4 
 
tians. Their religion is the Christ-religion^ not be- 
 cause it was founded b}' Christ but because it is the glad 
 tidings of the Redemption through Christ^s death and 
 resurrection. As Edward Everett Hale does not sub- 
 scribe to this doctrine the Evangelical Church Confer; 
 ence had o'ood warrant for refusino- him admission. 
 
 iBut while rejecting the Christ-theology, Christian 
 Unitarians agree with their antipodes in regarding 
 Judaism in the light of a mere and imperfect prelim- 
 inary. For them, all religious and moral development 
 has culminated in Jesus. Before him, none there was 
 in Judea or elsewhere that even in faint degree approx- 
 imated him in grasp of spiritual and ethical Truth, as 
 after him no other was needed except to explain what he 
 had taught, Jesus being the highest peak in the moun- 
 tain range of religious and. moral thought and enthusi- 
 asm. The Jews to whom first of all dwellers on earth 
 he addressed his words, rejected him incapable of un* 
 clcrstanding his normal grandeur and of entering into 
 rfie spirit of his all-inclusive love and all-pardoning 
 pity. He was unique not merely in his own time and 
 nation. He is unique, unparalleled as the teacher in 
 all time and in all nations. His doctrines are absolute. 
 They are not conditioned 1)y historical circumstance. 
 In fact, this one teacher stands in no organic relation 
 to his age or country. Judaism was neither his mother 
 nor his nurse. His words mean the extinction of Ju- 
 daism. By his advent, Israel, if ever it had justification 
 for its being, lost the right to existence. Jewish truth 
 was a dim taper the light of which paled to uttei- 
 quenching the moment this daystar burst forth in sub- 
 lime and supreme splendor. 
 
 It is evident that this Unitarian Christianity de- 
 clares Judaism to have been a stupid, perhaps a wicked 
 
 5 
 
error, if not before, certainly after, llie glorious be- 
 ginning of the .Christian era. All the tears shed by 
 Jewish eyes, all the suffering endured in these nineteen 
 centuries by Jacob's sons have been bootless, fruitless 
 tribute to tribal stubborness and racial arrogance. Tliey 
 were really in retribution of the Jcavs' refusal to ac- 
 cept the better and brighter truth. The labors of the 
 Jewish scholars were waste of effort. What little gold 
 the Eabbis lifted to the surface had been anticipated 
 in tlie richer treasures of the New Testament, and 
 could therefore easily have been spared by the family 
 of man. For nearly two millenia Judaism has been 
 sterile obstinacy and. the pathos of it all has been the 
 hallucination of Judaism that she was bearing and 
 rearing children sound in body and sane in mind. No 
 one who is a J«w and understands the spirit of Judaism 
 and is acquainted with Jewish literature can subscribe 
 to this verdict. Yet the Jew who lowers his own 
 historical fl'ag to unfurl that of Unitarian Christianity 
 acquiesces in this construction of history. In enrolling 
 himself among the disciples of the Jesus, whom the 
 Christian Unitarians proclaim as the one incomparably 
 great and divinely original teacher with whom no other 
 Prophet or thinker may be associated, the Jew declares 
 his acceptance of the theory that his martyr-forefathers 
 were incompetent to see the truth and by their bigotry 
 and blindness stood in the way of the moral and re- 
 ligious progress of their children and their community. 
 If the contentions of our Unitarian neighbors were 
 borne out by fact, whatever heart pang might attend the 
 resolution, we should not be slow^ to form it henceforth 
 to read our own history in the true light and act upon 
 the revelation thus vouchsafed. But unfortunately, the 
 Jesus of the Unitarian dogma is as little the Jesus of 
 
 6 
 
history as is tlie Christ of Paulinian theology. In 
 maintaining this, we need not invoke the aid of the 
 modern philosophy of evolution and ask its pronounce- 
 ments on the assumption that the teachings of Jesus are 
 in no way organically linked to the life and thought of 
 the age in which they took on first articulation. Let 
 the concession be made that genius always is inde- 
 pendent of time and locality. The question remains, 
 do what is known as the sayings of Jesus bear out the 
 claim of their absolute originality? Here again let the 
 widest concessions be made. Let us forget all we have 
 learned of the higher criticism which would warrant 
 the statement that very little of ihe 'New Testament 
 story is authentic and no certainty may be cherished 
 that the utterances ascribed to the "Master" fell from 
 his lips. We shall accept the gospels as co-temporaneous 
 biographies and the parables and sayings as steno- 
 graphic reports. In no wise do the contents of the 
 evangels corroborate the position that Jesus was one of 
 the creative minds who are born free children of 
 eternity and the universe and therefore untethered to 
 time and locality. There is not one syllable in his 
 teachings that will vindicate' his superior originality in 
 contrast to and conflict with the doctrines of the Syn- 
 agogue of his day. ^A^ien Geiger made this statement 
 four decades ago, many among the liberal Protestant 
 theologians with considerable passion attempted to re- 
 fute it. They have not succeeded in justifying their 
 own contrary insistences. Though to the present day, 
 Harnack and Bousset and men of minor equipment 
 continue to ignore the testimony of Jewish literature, 
 scholars at home in this field can harbor no doubt on 
 the correctne-s of Goiger's judgment. In method and 
 thought, Jesus is a Jewish haggadist. No new truth 
 
 7 
 
was winged by liim. His theology is Jewish. ITis ethics 
 is as little absolute as that of any other teacher. Many 
 of the positions advanced are unintelligible save to one 
 who is familiar with the peculiar vocabulary and ex- 
 pectations of the Messianism of the declining decades 
 of the second. Temple. His style has often been lauded 
 as unique. Jewish students have not been slow to rec- 
 ognize the beauty and force of his diction. Yet the 
 English poet who in recent weeks has discussed the 
 unique poetic quality of Jesus' similes and descriptive 
 powers has still to learn that almost every element which 
 he adduces is indigenous to the Jewish Mid rash and is 
 of usual occurrence in the picture language of the 
 Rabbinical homilies. The Jew thus has no reason for 
 abandoning his own literature in exchange for the 
 New Testament. In his own books he can find inspira- 
 tio as rich and as pure as in the gospels. 
 
 Nor is it true "that Judaism played no vital part in 
 the moral and religious destiny of the world after the 
 "fullillment in Jesus.'' If the ethics of the gospels 
 are final, as the Christian Unitarians insist they are, 
 the Jews in sober truth have good cause to argue that 
 but for them these ethics would never have been actu- 
 alized. It was the Jew who literally offered the left 
 cheek to be smitten while the right still tingled with 
 the unjust blow. In dealing with him, the "Christian" 
 world demanded an eye for an eye and life for life. 
 Imputing to him a murder which neither he nor his 
 fathers had committed, his tormentors exacted from 
 him millionfold requitement of blood. It seems then 
 that even while the years numbering the glad times of 
 salvation were chronicling the happenings, on our 
 planet the Jews were performing the function of mis- 
 sionaries illustrating by their live& of suffering the 
 
implications of these "absolute ethics." This, however, 
 is but one aspect of the service rendered by the Jew 
 after the birth of Jesus. 
 
 The Jew is the barometer of civilization. Alti- 
 tudes may be read by the telltale figures on the barom- 
 eter's graduated scale. The Jew indicates the hbxght 
 attained by civilization. The pressure that is upou 
 him reveals the state of the atmosphere surrounding 
 his neighbors. The Jew is a constant appeal to the con- 
 science»»of the world. He is a reproach to all that pre- 
 tend to live the true life and do not. That love and 
 good will were not the dominant motives of the Chris- 
 tianity of the elark ages is amply demonstrated by the 
 lot of the Jews in those days. But what about our 
 age? Desertion of Juelaism for Unitarian monotheism 
 would imply that there is no further call for the 
 liistorical unmasker of the world's immoral pretense. 
 Is there not? Let the last three decades of rampant 
 m'aterialism, of mad nationalism, of rabid anti-Semit- 
 ism answer ! Everyone born of a Jewish mother is 
 appointed to the duty which is the Jew's, to be the ba- 
 rometer of civilization. Call this mystery or what 
 you will. It is a fact accentuated even in the recep- 
 tion accorded the apostate by them whose ranks he joins. 
 It is a fact emphasized by the moral suspicions with 
 which the world judges the motives prompting the de- 
 cision of the Jewish renegade. The Jew who would 
 affiliate with Christian Unitarians will not have to ac- 
 cept a new tholog}'. But while assenting to the view 
 dis^'.is-ed before according to which Judaism was poorer 
 ir> moral inspiration than the religion of Jesus, the 
 Jewish neophyte in addition exposes himself to the 
 just distrust that the desire to escape the obligations 
 which came to him in. the hour of his birth has in- 
 
fluenced liis net. floral cowards certainly lack consc- 
 (M-ation. They are sorry exponents of religious and 
 ethical trutlis. One who oasts stones on the grave of 
 his fatlier is not merely not advanced to higher outlooks 
 than Judaism vouchsafes, he is infinitely below the 
 spiritual and moral level of his mother's religion. 
 
 All this is said in no narrow spirit. By all means 
 let us be broad. But has Unitarian ever dreamt of 
 joining Judaism ? Here is the rub ! To accept our 
 name "would imply rejecting the prejudice of two 
 thousand .years, that interpretation of history according 
 to which Jesus originated even in Palestine entirely 
 now religious and moral teachings. N'ames are not 
 unimportant. Labels are not always libels. Jacob 
 in tlie legend will not permit his assailant to depart 
 ere lie have been blessed by him. And that blessing 
 was conveyed in the tormentor hailing him as Israel, 
 ''champion of God." As long as Jew is construed to 
 im])ly arrested moral or religious growth, poverty or 
 iiiiferiority 4n humane incemtives, no Jew can ac- 
 quiesce in labeling Judaism by any other name. The 
 moral principle of the "Kampf ums Eecht" is involved 
 in this. Unitarianism proclaiming the leadership of 
 Jesus, is Judaism, if it is really accepting the religion of 
 the "Master." Why not acknowledge this? Judaism 
 nurtured Jesus. In no respect did his teachings trans- 
 cend Judaism. He was neither more universalistic nor 
 less nationalistic than the s3'nagogue of his day. If 
 union there shall be of these two regiments marching 
 under different banners tokening identity, why not 
 ndo|)t as the common ap]iellation the older name? Prob- 
 ably the historic associations of their names are rich 
 sources of inspiration to our neighbors. But so are ours 
 to us. We perpetuate an injustice upon the memory 
 
 10 
 
of our fathers and abandon onr clear right to orig- 
 inality and priority if we haul down onr flag. As 
 long as even Unitarians are loath to bless ns as "the 
 lighters for truth" we shall not entertain the suggestion 
 to obliterate the line of division. It stands for a prin- 
 ciple, not for a caprice. 
 
 But after all we do not agree in fundamentals. Re- 
 ligion for the -Jew means something altogether different 
 from what it signifies to the monotheistic non-Jew. In 
 the first place, "death and immortality are in no sense 
 focal in the religion of the Jew. Life is. This im- 
 portant feature "has of late been somewhat blurred. 
 Into our synagogues has intruded a notion of religion 
 as concerned with dying which is altogether imsup- 
 ported by the testimony of Judaism given in Jewish lit- 
 erature. Our Bible maintains a significant silence on 
 immortality. VHiat will happen to us after we shall 
 have been freed from the fetters of our mortality, no 
 Jew ever ventured to predict in precise detail. Tahnu- 
 dic speculation, while more prolific than was the Bible 
 on this point is far from dogmatic inflexibility. And in 
 the Talmudic elaboration of religion scant recognition 
 was given to the doctrine of immortality. For what- 
 e.ver may be in store for us, this is the certainty cher- 
 ished by the Jew, that the beyond shall l)e neither a 
 magnet 'nor a deterent. This life worthily lived is the 
 best prelude to whatever may await us in the hereafter. 
 Orthodox Jew, and Eadical Jew, in fact, whosoever is 
 a Jewish Jew, is not prompted by the thought of im- 
 mortality, to seek God's ^altars. His religion certainly 
 is not a scheme to open to him the gates of heaven. 
 It is not a plan to buy him immunity from the punish- 
 ment that is prepared for the sinner. Like eleath. so is 
 sin not the dominant preoccupation of Judaism. Chris- 
 
 11 
 
tianity, however, is the religion of other-workllines?. 
 This life is really an atlliction, a burden. The life to 
 be i& the true destiny of man. It is the first and the 
 final solicitude that urges man to become and be re- 
 ligious. Religion is the guide to the beyond ; it prefers 
 the assurance of salvation; even in the eyes of the non- 
 dogmatic Christian, the main function of religion is to 
 console; its purpose is to fill the heart with sweet con- 
 fidence in the promises of life eternal; it predicts that 
 the contrasts and conflicts of this life shall be har- 
 monized in the beyond'; that injustice done here will be 
 requited there ; the first shall be last, and the last shall 
 be first. Other-worldliness is the obsession of the re- 
 ligionist in all religions save sound and sane Judaism. 
 In the second place, Judaism not being a religion of 
 salvation; and therefore its preoccupation being cen- 
 tered in this life, its passion is for righteousness here 
 on earth. "Do not weep," says the Prophet, "for them 
 that die/' but weep for them that must leave their 
 country. Foreseeing a great national catastrophe Jere- 
 miah calls for tears over the unrighteousness of kings 
 and courtiers that have brought upon the people the 
 calamity. Death is natural. It is no evil. But he 
 utters his "Woe unto them that build their houses, 
 but not with righteousness;" that live in palaces while 
 they hold the poor in contempt; that spread the founda- 
 tion of their wealth on the spoliation of the weaker 
 members of society. Religious righteousness as a so- 
 cial potency the Jewish prophet pleads for; it is social 
 unrighteousness against which he protests. Not indi- 
 vidual salvation, but social adjustment of the basis of 
 equity, is the sacramental insistence of Juelaism, the 
 one religion that would inspirit every act and thought 
 with reverence for God as the One creator whose breath 
 
 12 
 
animates mortal clay and ayIio made man in His im'age. 
 
 On the premises of Panlinian theology and dogmatics 
 other-worldliness is both logical and inevitable. If all 
 is contaminated by sin, if the curse is upon this world, 
 one who has least concern in this world is free^ from 
 the contagion of sin and is safest from being dom- 
 inated by the spirit of sinfulness. Hence less of the 
 world means more of glory to come. But if this world is 
 not under sin, preoccupation with this world's affairs 
 cannot be construed to be sinful. And yet so strongly 
 has the dogmatic position of Christianity influenced 
 its own dogmatic modifications that even by these some- 
 how or other the affairs of this world are held to be 
 secondary. 
 
 Other-worldliness is reintroduced under the new 
 name spirituality. Eeligion is construed to brin^ about 
 a union in the spirit of God and man ; a mystic merging 
 of the individual soul in the All-soul. Exaltation and 
 emotion are welcomed as symptoms of the spiritual re- 
 generation. Eeligion is reduced to an attitude rather 
 than an unl^roken series of consecrated activities. It is 
 something that is added to life rather than a force 
 pervadincr all life. An element of unreality is intro- 
 duced. The senses are looked upon with suspicion. The 
 body is held to be of evil. N'ature is synonymous with 
 unholines?. The natural healthy life is put under the 
 l)an. Eesignation, quietism, not assertion and re- 
 sistance are urged as sacred moods. Ambition is sin- 
 ful. Altruism is posited as contrary to egoism. Self- 
 effacement is declared the prerequisite to S'anctified 
 spirituality. 
 
 The Jewish mind has but little in common with this 
 spirituality. The Jew is urged to develop self in order 
 that in the service of others he may do more. In this 
 
 13 
 
dust woven body of his, his spirituality shall find its 
 instrument. Reality shall be made to conform with 
 ideality. Activity, not meditation, is the resultant dis- 
 position. The Jewish religion is not something added 
 to life but is ]>art of life itself. Strength, not sweetness 
 is its gift. 13uty, not exaltation, is its expression. 
 
 ^luch of the non-dogmatic Christianity 1 know is 
 saturated with this other-worldliness. Its sympathies 
 are noble but inell'ective. It dreams of a perfect world 
 but forgets to battle for the ])erfection of the world. It 
 prays and worships. It analyzes moods, not motives, 
 •and is introspective. It lacks virility. It is graceful 
 but timid. It lives in the clouds beyond the dust oi 
 this earth. Judaism is always beyond thedluaordlu 
 this earth. Judaism is ahvays virile or it is not Jewish. 
 Prayer and. worship are means not ends. Faith must be 
 a flame that warms, not a pale light that betrays some- 
 where a star. . V/ith this non-dogmatic religion of spir- 
 ituality we have nothing in. common. 
 
 It were unpardonable not to acknowledge that in the 
 Western States Unitarianism, like Judaism, has devel- 
 oped 'along freer lines. Character and condnct, not dog- 
 ma or sentiment, are the .cardinal intentions of re- 
 ligion according to the declaration of the Western con- 
 ference. Here it would seem the opportunity was of- 
 fered for a closer fellowship between this ethical Uni- 
 tarianism and our own Judaism. But again this differ- 
 ence comes to light. Our ethical Judaism is not the 
 result of modifications of Judaism. We had to relin- 
 (juish no dogma. The ethics of the ])ro])hets have al- 
 ways been the inspiration of Judaism. Even orthodox 
 Judaism is under the consecration of ethical passion. 
 The line of division between orthodoxy and radicalism 
 in Judaism does- not coincide with that between dogma 
 
 14 
 
and deed. Our liberal friends will not understand that 
 we have not been influenced by modern theories but 
 have siniply asked Isaiah and Amos and Hoseah to 
 speak to us. \Xe have Ijecome more Jewish when we 
 eliminated old symbols. In our relations with non- 
 Jewish liberalism we must emphasize our Jewishness 
 all the more since even their greatest teachers like those 
 of the Christian wing refuse to accord to Judaism its 
 due. In accentuating the positive ethical ambition of 
 religion as an energy to build up character and reform 
 society according to the insistences of justice, liberal- 
 ism has simply reverted to prophetic Judaism. The 
 Jew has no justification for abandoning Judaism on the 
 plea that service to man calls him to the front. That 
 service has always been the sacramental obligation of his 
 religion. 
 
 We rejoice in the good work at all times sponsored 
 by liberal Unitarianism. We do not forget that every 
 noble cause for the betterment of social conditions had 
 among its prophets men and women of the Unitarian 
 fraternity. To enlist under the banner of social ser- 
 vice, no Jew is required to abjure his Judaism. Quite 
 to the contrary, his Jud^aism will inspire him to be 
 loyal to this flag. In following it, he will obey fhe 
 prophets' call. To battle for God and man is Israel's 
 historic dut;\. The bond of union between us and 
 others of similar consecration need not necessitate the 
 obliterating of traditional associations. We shall not 
 and we cannot even by implication concede that the 
 centuries of our dispersion were a fatal waste of energy. 
 Until this world is willing to bless Jacob, his descend- 
 ants cannot resign their birthright. The distinction 
 between Judaism and Unitarianism is not without a 
 difference. 
 
 15 
 
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