SERMON 
 
 DELIVERED BY THK 
 
 (\J,-\ (" ^^ C V '( V// V OffW tf 
 
 ei mmmm 1. (ffl.. Marks, 
 
 TABERNACLES, OCT. 3rd, 1887, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 WEST LONDON SYNAGOGUE, 
 
 OF BRITISH JEWS, 
 
 UPPER BERKELEY STREET, W. 
 
 Printed by kind permission.
 
 " My house shall be proclaimed a house of prayer 
 for all peoples!' Isaiah Ivi., 7. 
 
 THE festival of Tabernacles, which fell in with the 
 completion of the harvest in Palestine, was especially 
 identified by our fathers of old with the promotion of 
 family joy and social love. It therefore strikes a note that 
 may bring our thoughts and our anticipations into a kind 
 of relationship with what the chapter of holy writ, from 
 which I have borrowed my text, predicts of the future 
 of humanity. In this elevating and cheering prophecy 
 a picture is drawn that presents an ideal of human 
 perfection and a state of social happiness, made 
 manifest by a higher life in every child of God. 
 
 Humanity is no longer to be restricted to the 
 limitations of country, race, or tribe, and all contention 
 is to give place to concord and gentleness. What 
 differences soever may have prevailed amongst men 
 with respect to religious belief, and the varying forms in 
 which that common sentiment is outwardly expressed, 
 are to be consigned to the past, and there is to be one 
 house of prayer, where all may meet and join in praise 
 and thanksgiving to the universal Father of men. An 
 earlier prophet* than the speaker of our text has 
 named this common Temple Beth Alohi Yacob. " The 
 house of the God of Jacob," whence the Torah or 
 Mosaic law is to go forth. Such is the social, moral, 
 and spiritual condition which the world is to assume in 
 what we Jews understand as the predicted age of 
 Messiah, when the Abrahamic race is to complete the 
 idyllic destiny decreed to its progenitor of " making 
 blessed all the families of the earth. "f 
 
 * Isaiah ii., 3. t Gen, xii.. 3. 
 
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 Many are the vicissitudes which history records of 
 our race, but in no instance, no, not even in times of 
 the direst misfortune, did they suffer this prophetic 
 revelation of the future to be blotted out from their 
 thoughts and their hopes, how distant soever its accom- 
 plishment might seem to loom in the future. No political 
 distuibance that agitated the Jewish state as it passed 
 successively in vassalage to the Persians, the Seleucides, 
 the Syro-Greeks, or the Romans, tended to weaken this 
 elevating idea, or to prevent it from being rehearsed in 
 the liturgy of the Synagogue. The more troublous the 
 age, and the more rife hostile fanaticism waxed, the more 
 the pious Jew sought and found hope in the belief that 
 persecution would gradually abate, altho' its spirit 
 might flicker at intervals, and that the crowning scene 
 of the moral drama of Jewdom would realise the 
 psalmist's prayer, that " mercy and truth should meet 
 together, and righteousness and peace be locked in 
 fond embrace."* The Greek poets taught that such a 
 golden age had been ; the Jewish prophets assigned it 
 to a distant future. 
 
 This Messianic idea finds its most intense expres- 
 sion in the apocalyptic books of Daniel, Enoch, Sirach, 
 and the Sybelline leaves, all of which date downwards 
 from about the year 170 before the Christian era. The 
 apocalyptic transcendentalists had conceived the notion 
 that the prediction of the prophets of Judah was near 
 at hand, and not only the Apostles of the Church that 
 arose nearly nineteen centuries ago, but also its Founder, 
 imagined that the promised Golden Age would be 
 realized before "the present generation should pass 
 away." But the events of that era offered so marked a 
 contradiction to the condition of the world which 
 Hebrew prophecy had described, that the new Church 
 subsequently taught that its accomplishment had been 
 deferred until the completion of the Millenium. Well, 
 time brought about the effluxion of a thousand years, 
 and then, the world, so far from wearing the gilded 
 aspect of Messianism, was exhibited in the most deplor- 
 able of what history calls " the dark ages," when 
 
 * Ps. Ixxxv., 11.
 
 5 
 
 ignorance, superstition, and foul murder for imputed 
 error of opinion sat like a nightmare on many a fair 
 land, where civilisation and art had reared their temples 
 ages before the epoch from which the Church assumed 
 Messiah's reign to have commenced. But theological 
 conception, and intense reverence for tradition, which so 
 often assumes the form of moral paradox, could not be 
 brought to yield compliance with what was obvious to 
 everyone, who regarded the existing state of society 
 from the stand-point of Hebrew prophecy, and so it 
 was theologically determined, that all the Messianic 
 predictions of the prophets of Judah, touching the 
 progress and development of mankind, universal peace, 
 the perfection of human happiness, and the union of 
 all hearts and minds, had already been realised, and 
 that the glorious epoch had found its ideal in the form 
 of a " man of sorrows." 
 
 Let not the aim of what I have just said be mis- 
 construed into any intention of animadverting on 
 religious opinions held outside of the Synagogue. My 
 object is simply to show how essentially different the 
 conception of the Messianic idea which pervades the 
 Church is from that which the Synagogue has ever 
 entertained, based, as it believes, on the same canons ot 
 interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, as reason and 
 criticism apply to all other writings. Indeed, we should 
 be little in accord with the spirit of the large.-minded 
 prophet of our text, if, pending the fulfilment of what 
 he predicts for humanity at large, we did not exhibit 
 a becoming respect for every religious opinion that 
 enlists the conscience and the faith of our fellow men, 
 of what creed soever they be. Heaven forbid that we 
 Jews, whom it behoves to remember the prophetic 
 teaching that " all men are brothers and the equal 
 children of one God,"* should presume to stigmatise the 
 religious opinions of a fellow mortal, whose views do 
 not coincide with our own, as those of a creature of 
 error. If at any time in ages gone by, a whisper of 
 sectarian malevolence has escaped the lips of a Jew, it 
 has been wrung from him by the persecution he was 
 
 * Malachi ii., 10.
 
 6 
 
 suffering for the religion to which he clung. Because, as 
 the prophet Malachi reminds us, \ve are all children of the 
 Heavenly Father, our dependence on Him is universal, 
 and altho' a notable variety prevails in our speculative 
 opinions of the Deity, as well as in the forms in which 
 we worship Him, we all alike implore His grace and 
 the lifting up of the light of His countenance upon us. 
 Until the time comes for the accomplishment of our 
 text-words, there will be, there must be, marked 
 differences amongst us. Some will worship in the 
 Synagogue, others in the Church, the Chapel, or the 
 Mosque. But what then ? What Jew \vho knows his 
 Bible, will dissent from the principle so plainly set forth 
 in the Haphtorah of this afternoon, that the sincere 
 prayer of the Gentile finds equal acceptance with God 
 with that of the pious Israelite ?* Fanatics there have 
 been in every age, who have ascribed to the Deity the 
 same prejudices and passions as their own, and have 
 held it to be inconceivable how any but one stereotyped 
 form of worship can be acceptable on high. The Jew 
 however, far from being perplexed at these varying 
 forms of devotion, recognises in that very variety a 
 telling and touching evidence of the righteousness of 
 God, who distinguishes between the errors of the head, 
 if errors they be, and those of the heart. Dating as far 
 back as the Sinaitic epoch we light on the divine words: 
 " In every place where I suffer My name to be pro- 
 claimed, My blessing shall be accorded."! Reprobating 
 in the sternest manner idolatry like that of Canaan, 
 which fostered the most revolting crimes, + Judaism 
 gives no countenance to maxims or deeds that have 
 their birth in sectarian bias and unsocial prejudice. 
 The Jew can live, as indeed it behoves him to live, in 
 friendly and fraternal relations with the adherents of 
 every creed that does not enjoin what is opposed to the 
 great moral law, or what is prejudicial to the well-being 
 of mankind at large. 
 
 Concurrent, however, with the respect which we 
 pay to all religious opinions conscientiously professed 
 
 * See 1st Kings viii., 41-43. f Exod. xx., 24. 
 
 J See Leviticus xviii., 27-28.
 
 by others, should be our devotion to the religion we 
 inherit and which we believe to be strictly in accord- 
 ance with the teachings of the Bible. It is no secret 
 to many of us, who come in contact with a variety of 
 opinions amongst our own brotherhood of the Syna- 
 gogue, that there are not a few at the present day, who 
 argue that the Mosaic dispensation was adapted 
 especially and exclusively for an age and for a state of 
 society essentially different from those of the times in 
 which we live, and who also affirm that a belief in God 
 and in the superiority of right over wrong, are sufficient 
 to constitute the religion of the Jew, and that he no 
 longer stands in need of ritual practice or of subscription 
 to outward form. But nothing can be found in the 
 whole volume of Scripture, from Moses to Malachi, 
 that may give a color to such latitudinarian views. 
 True it is that Moses restricts such precepts as sacrifice, 
 agricultural economy, and other observances proper to 
 local, climatic, and similar influences to, quoting his 
 own words, " the land whither you go to possess it."* 
 But all the other institutions of the Pentateuch, the great 
 Legislator stamps with the seal of permanency, to be 
 observed "throughout all your generations."! What 
 ought to be ever present to us as Jews is, purity of faith 
 and purity of life, the essentials for accomplishing our 
 mission as the appointed religious teachers of the world ; 
 and from the due performance of this preceptive obliga- 
 tion, it is absolutely impossible for us to discard outward 
 forms of worship. Our vocation also being missionary, 
 we cannot close the Synagogue against anyone whom 
 conscience impels to enter it. Conversion went on 
 uninterruptedly in the earlier history of the Synagogue, 
 so long as the truths of the Bible were to be found in 
 the Hebrew version only, and when the Gentile world 
 could know nothing of them, save what it saw reflected 
 in the worship and in the conduct of Jews. But in our 
 times, the holy Book is rendered into every language 
 and every dialect of the civilised globe, and each 
 individual can read and interpret it for himself; we do 
 not therefore hold it incumbent on us to organise a 
 
 * Oi-ut. iv., 5, 14, '2H, &<. f Lev. xxiii., 14, 21.
 
 propaganda, nor to intrude our views on the consciences 
 of others. What the text of to-day predicts we leave 
 in all humility to the time-working providence of God. 
 Our own conduct and our own example are the best 
 propaganda ; and, exhibiting our Jewish sentiment 
 through these media, we can follow the path conscience 
 directs, striving to perform well our part, and dis- 
 carding all differences of creed in our social relations, 
 conforming to the dictum of the prophet Micah 
 " Whilst others adhere to their creed and worship, let 
 us walk in the name of our God for ever and ever."* 
 
 He, whose mandate all nature obeys ; He, whose 
 providence over the destinies of Israel is as manifest 
 on this Tabernacle day, as it has been in every phase of 
 our exceptional history, may well enlist our confidence 
 in his supernal power to accomplish through Israel His 
 glorious promise, to make our race instrumental for 
 advancing spiritual truth and moral development, until 
 they attain their climax in bringing all men to worship 
 God in one common House of Prayer, and when all that 
 is base in humanity shall give place to what is exalted in 
 thought and sublime in action. The generation whose 
 privilege it may be to witness this consummation, will 
 realise what Jews have always understood to be the 
 meaning of " Messiah's advent " and " the coming 01 
 the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 
 iv., 5.
 
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