LI BR AR Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIRT OR 
 
 Received 
 Accessions 
 
 Shelf Wo... 
 
JEWISH 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 \7TTH A. 
 
 CBITICISM ON MAHOMEPISM 
 
 BY; 
 
 E. BEXAMOZEGH. 
 
 THE FRENCH., 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY EMANUEL BLOCHMAJ?. 
 5633 1873. 
 

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 And ye (Israel) are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? 
 Yea, there is no Rock, I know none. Isaiah, xliv. 8. 
 
 THE most effective method oi counteracting an old and 
 wide-spread error, is to show how and why it arose. Al- 
 though a logical refutation, a priori, or an historical one 
 from cause and effect, a posteriori, would have more weight 
 with the thinker or lover of abstract ideas, -yet, for the 
 majority at least, no method seems better than the first. 
 Both the latter indeed are admirably used in the fine essay 
 here presented to the reader, and the author ostensibly 
 rests his case upon their provings ; yet the whole tenor of 
 his discourse undesignedly evolves the first in a remark- 
 able degree. The reason of the origin of Christianity 
 clearly comes out, and the splendor of those ethereal doc- 
 trines that it claims as its own, are traced in detail and 
 with unerring accuracy to their true source the then set- 
 ting sun of Judaism. Even the real peculiarities of the 
 new system, such as Justification by Faith, Freedom from 
 the Law, &c., are ably shown to be misapplications of old 
 Rabbinical doctrines or traditions. 
 
 We have had, within the past half century, many works 
 exposing the delusions from which Christianity sprung; 
 none of these, however, occupies exclusively that portion 
 of the field of inquiry explored by this essay, chiefly, we 
 suppose, because the writers lacked that knowledge of 
 Hebrew literature, of the Talmud, and the still more recon- 
 dite Cabalistic works with which Jews alone are con- 
 versant. As this essay was written by one well versed in 
 Hebrew lore, all the necessary arguments are brought 
 to bear, necessary we say; for as a comparison is here 
 made between an original creed (Judaism) and its two 
 
IV PREFACE* 
 
 main derivative branches (Christianity and Mohammedan- 
 ism), it is obvious it could not have been instituted with- 
 out a full acquaintance with the former. 
 
 In the second chapter are given an analysis of the ex- 
 traordinary doctrines taught by Paul, of the Hebrew doc- 
 trines from which he manufactured his seductive fictions, 
 and the consequences, obvious as well as inevitable, which 
 they at once and for centuries produced. This portion of 
 the book is highly curious and interesting. We would 
 also call special attention to the ninth chapter, where the 
 universal -\- and cosmopolitan character of Judaism is vin- 
 dicated. 
 
 The main argument of the book is that Judaism has a 
 two-fold character a material and a spiritual side ; the 
 first, dealing with man's worldly interests and his various 
 relations to the present world ; the second, with the con- 
 science of the individual, with things most real indsed, 
 but unseen or to come : and that this system true to 
 nature, true to the necessities of man's constitution and 
 of his present state has been "bisected" and therefore 
 wholly marred by the two offshoots herein criticised. 
 Christianity, it is shown, has taken the spiritual side of 
 Judaism, and insisting upon this alone to the exclusion of 
 the other (so indispensable in man's present state), has 
 made itself thereby ridiculously impracticable, and cre- 
 ated not only the wildest fanaticism but whenever it has 
 had full play, unchecked by reason or common sense the 
 most revolting licentiousness. Mohammedanism, on the 
 other hand, ignoring Judaism's etherial side, has adopted 
 as its sole canon the secular part of the Mosaic Code- 
 given solely for the preservation of the state and of soci- 
 ety ; hence the materialism, the torpor of tho spiritual and 
 purifying element in man's nature, and -the social and po- 
 litical semi-barbarism so observable in Islamism. Still, a 
 system springing from the latter selection, must obviously 
 be preferable in theory and practice; in theory, as it 
 strictly preserved the Monotheism of its mother-creed, 
 and never gave to a creature the incommunicable attributes 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 of the First Cause ; and in practice, as it would not be 
 liable to fall into the extravagances of its " solely-spiritual' 
 sister-creed. All this is shown with great ability by the 
 author. 
 
 So far, in this exclusive adoption of a special side of 
 Judaism, can we draw a parallel between the two sys- 
 tems : but then (unfortunately for Christianity) they 
 remarkably diverge ; for while Islamism, as shown in 
 the second part, transcribes exactly, even in their 
 minutiae, its dogmas and precepts from Judaism, Chris- 
 tianity as embodied in the Papacy, its most legitimate 
 offspring has taken nearly all its ceremonials, and most 
 of its practical ordinances, as monasticism, celibacy, au- 
 ricular confession, pictures, beads, canonization of saints, 
 etc., and some of its dogmas even, as the Lamb, the 
 Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, etc., from Indian 
 creeds, especially from Buddhism. Catholicism is, in- 
 deed, so close a copy of the latter, that a disciple of 
 Budda could not without difficulty distinguish one from 
 the other. Protestantism has been a revolt from this 
 amalgamation; but rejecting tradition, that served as a 
 check in some degree upon the fanaticism so native to the 
 soil of Christianity, and encountering in the written rec- 
 ords the conflicting and irreconcilable doctrines of Jesus 
 and his apostles, it was naturally rent, like the primitive 
 Church, into a thousand pieces. 
 
 Incidentally, this work establishes beyond a doubt two 
 main facts as to the founder of Christianity: the first, 
 that he was in its truest sense, a fanatic, i. e. a one-sided 
 philosopher ; the second, that he was a false prophet (un- 
 consciously perhaps) by asserting that the end of the world 
 was at Jiand (Luke xxi, 32 :) ; to which last we must chiefly 
 ascribe (as the essay shows) the recklessness and vice 
 of the primitive Churches. 
 
 The prevailing tone of the work is critical and logical; 
 philosophical, too, at need, yet without a dull or tiresome 
 page. It sparkles sometimes with anecdotes, and is quite 
 free from spleen or bitterness, a condemnation of doc- 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 trine never being made the ground of an aspersion of char- 
 acter. Every allowance that reason suggests is made for 
 the errors and short-comings of Jesus and Paul. On the 
 whole, we think, that no candid Christian can rise from the 
 perusal of this work without feeling a load lifted from his 
 mind and heart, and without being completely satisfied 
 that, as to the comparative merit of Judaism and Christ- 
 ianity, he has had full and most reliable data for forming 
 or rectifying his judgment. 
 
 As the word "Lord" was in a few instances injudi- 
 ciously employed by the essayist, it did not occur to the 
 translator to alter the term till too late. There is a fre- 
 quent misuse of the term Lord throughout the James' 
 version of the so-called Old Testament. The proper ren- 
 dering of the original four-letter word (Tetragrammaton), 
 implying past, present and future, would have been the 
 "Eternal." This remark seems needful for Christians, 
 who accustomed to the application of Lord to Jesus in 
 the "New Testament," and reading the captions of the 
 English translators to the books of Prophets, (so ridicu- 
 lously misleading as to the persons or events therein 
 referred to) are much more liable to fall into error; nor 
 will it seem trivial to those conversant with Hebrew liter- 
 ature, so sensitive as to any infringement of the first com- 
 mandment. So we read : 
 
 I, I am the Eternal, and besides me there is no Saviour. Isaiah sliii, u> 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 I. 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS. 
 
 Examination of the Pretensions of Christian Ethics over Philosophy 
 and Paganism. Its Alleged Superiority to Judaism, and the 
 Absurdity of this Assumption. Immutability of Divine Dec- 
 larations ; Man capable of Perfection only when the Word of 
 God is Perfect A Revelation Repeated is Suspicious and 
 Useless; It Militates against Christianity. Dissimilarity of 
 Judaism ; Its Civil and Moral Polity. The Requisites of every 
 Government ; Christianity Incapable of Fulfilling them. Pat- 
 riotism a Jewish Sentiment. Two ways of Interpreting Fra- 
 ternity and Universal Equality in Christianity. Defects and 
 Weakness of Christian Ethics. The limits of Comparison be- 
 tween both Systems * 1 -12 
 
 II. 
 
 THE DOCTRINES UPON WHICH THE CHRISTIAN CODE OF MORALS 
 IS FOUNDED. 
 
 Abolition of the Law. How it is understood by Jesus. Faith 
 without "Works. Rupture between Catholicism and Prot- 
 estantism. With Paul. Faith, without Works. Saves. Con- 
 tempt for the Body : Mysticism. It ends in Immorality and 
 Materialism ; Proofs from Reason and History. Gnosticism 
 and its Excesses ; Its Seed in the Gospel. The Spiritualism of 
 Paul, what The Liberty of Spiritual Death. The Faithful, 
 dead in Jesus Christ ; Origin of this Fiction. They rise with 
 Him; Another Fiction, its Origin and Effects upon Morality. 
 The Redemption. " The Law, the cause of Sin." The Re- 
 demption of the Jew, the Christian 12 - 29 
 
 III. 
 
 HISTORICAL RESULTS. 
 
 Scandals in the Church. Embarrassment of the Apostles. The 
 Nicolites. The Prophecy of Thyadira. The Simonians. 
 Other Gnostic Sect 5 ?. Sects of the Middle Ages. Principles 
 of Gnostic Immorality ; Inferential Theory. Judaism Knows , 
 Nothing Similar. Solitary Exception Confirmatory of our 
 System. Protestantism and its Ethical Svstms. Quietism. 29 37 
 
TABLE OP CONTENTS* 
 
 IY. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 Its Trials and its Pretentions. Why Hebrew Ethics has not ben 
 duly appreciated. Division of Ethics. Dignity of Man, nig 
 Fall, his Regeneration. Free Judgment and Grace. Life. - 
 General Maxims. Pharisaical Plan. Examples. Testimony 
 of the Gospels. 38 50 
 
 V. 
 
 HUMILITY. 
 
 Abraham and Moses. The Bible. The " Poor in Spirit." The 
 Kingdom and the Earth that are to be their Heritage. Cabal- 
 istic Sense necessary for the Comprehension of the Law. 
 Greatness of the Humble. Authority. Example of Jesus. 
 Submission to Injury. Other Beatitudes. The Persecuted. 
 Pride. Anger. Serpent and Dove. The Child. Self-Denial. 
 Voluntary Poverty. . . . . . . ..... . . . . 51 61 
 
 VI. 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 Accusations of Jesus. They Strike at the Bible as well as well atf 
 at the Pharisees. Civil Law and Moral Law ; Necessity of 
 Distinguishing. Cupidity and Anger Condemned by the Phar- 
 isees. Their Expansion of the Decalogue. Supposed Superi- 
 ority of Gospel Charity. God is Charity. Hebrew Charity ; 
 Distinct from Alms which it Excludes. The Three Enemies. 
 Who the Enemy According to the Gospel. Country and Soci- 
 ety in Christianity. Parable of the Samaritan 62 75 
 
 VII. 
 
 UNIVERSAL CHARITY. 
 
 Qualities of the Universal Charity of Judaism. Not to be found in 
 Christian Charity. Unity of Man's Origin. The Worth and. 
 Results of the Doctrine in the Teachings of the Pharisees. 
 Man made after God's Image ; Value of the Doctrine. Unity 
 of Destiny. Moses and Sophonias. History of the Primitive 
 Ages. Humanitarian Character of the Prophecies ; Can be 
 traced in the Laws. Justice and Charity equal for all. Uni- 
 versal Charity of the Pharisees. Circumstances that Enhance 
 its Value. Salvation to all Men. Idea of Man. Humanitarian 
 Ideas of the Pharisees. Gentile Greatness equal to that of the 
 High Priest. Universal Love, Respect for Life, Property, and 
 Reputation. Restrictions. Political Enemy. Christ has Cre- 
 ated the Religious Enemy 75 85 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS* IX 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PEBSONAL ENEMIES. 
 
 Mosaic Precepts and Pharisaical Interpretations. Forgiveness of 
 Injuries. Moses, the Prophets, and the Pharisees. Reward of 
 Pardon. The Pardon of God. Duties of the Injurer ; Those 
 of the Injured. Examples of the Pharisees. What enhances 
 their Morality 85 93 
 
 IX. 
 
 LOVE TO SINNERS. 
 
 Meaning of the Pharisees' Reproach to Jesus. Passage from Eze- 
 kiel. Pharisees Interpretation. Brotherly Reproof ; Its Dif- 
 ferent Forms. Aaron t je Model of a Priest. Abraham the 
 Model of Apostles. Doctors strive to convert Sinners. Testi- 
 mony of the Gospels. Privileges of the Converted. The Gen- 
 tiles. Measure for Measure. Universality of Judaism. . . 93 103 
 
 X. 
 
 TEUST IN GOD. 
 
 Trust Preached by Jesus. Its Extravagance. Two Pharisaical 
 Schools. The Jewish Prototypes of the Gospel Trust. The 
 Dogmatic Fiction, Making Man free from Toil. Toil in Juda- 
 ism and in Christianity. Pharisaical Examples. The Object 
 of Life ; The Glory of God. Our Method of Comparing the 
 Two Systems of Morality. Judgment of Mr. Salvador. Its 
 Inaccuracy. His Mode of Characterizing the Systems. Man 
 find Woman. The House and the Cloister Ifrt 113 
 
 PAJIT SECOND. 
 
 ISLAMISM . 
 
 MOHAMMEDISM Its Doctrines 1 17 
 
 Worship and Ethics 1723 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EXAMINATION or THE PBETSNSIONS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS OVER PHILOSOPHY AND 
 PAGANISM ITS ALLEGED SUPERIORITY TO JUDAISM, AND THE ABSURDITY OF THIS 
 ASSUMPTION IMMUTABILITY OF DIVINE DECLARATIONS ; MAN CAPABLE OF PERFEC 
 TION ONLY WHEN THE WOBD OF GOD is PERFECT A REVELATION REPEATED is 
 SUSPICIOUS AND USELESS ; IT MILITATES AGAINST CHRISTIANITY DISSIMILARITY OF 
 JUDAISM ; ITS CIVIL AND MORAL POLITY THE REQUISITES OF EVERY GOVERNMENT ; 
 CHRISTIANITY INCAPABLE OF FULFILLING THEM PATRIOTISM A JEWISH SENTIMENT 
 Two WAYS OF INTERPRETING FRATERNITY AND UNIVERSAL EQUALITY IN CHRIS- 
 XIANTTY DEFECTS AND WEAKNESS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS THE LIMITS OF COMPARISON 
 BETWEEN BOTH SYSTEMS. 
 
 Of all the elements that have aided, in ancient or modern 
 times, the triumph of Christianity, the most important, unques- 
 tionably, is its JEthics. Christianity entertains so high an idea of 
 its own moral code, that it does not hesitate to assert, that the 
 absolute excellence of this code is the best proof of its own 
 divine origin. If this pretention is just, then must its Ethics be 
 superior, not only to the best products, in this sphere, of the 
 Pagan world, as well as to all that human reason could ever 
 produce, but also to all that divine reason has ever communi- 
 cated in this respect to the most excellent of mankind. For the 
 divine origin of Christianity cannot be proved, without first 
 showing that neither Paganism, Philosophy, nor even Judaism 
 itself, was ever able to attain a similar height ; which implies, 
 as far as the last is concerned, a maturing process, in its 
 manifestations at least, of Divine reason. 
 
 Are these assumptions, is this pride of superiority well 
 founded ? Is there no exaggeration in the praise Christianity 
 lavishes upon itself ? 
 
 We do not undertake to examine its relations to Paganism, 
 or even to Philosophy. Were such our aim, it would be easy 
 
 I 
 
2 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 for us, book in hand, to show, that, as to Philosophy, little have 
 the pages of Plato, little the maxims of the Stoics specially 
 of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the friends of Rabbi Jehudah 
 Hannassi little the eloquent passages of Cicero, not to mention 
 the noble things Philosophy has produced, and may still produce 
 in ages to come, to envy in the finest ethical claims put forth 
 by Christianity. As to Paganism, without urging the simplicity, 
 beauty, and elevation of Greco-Roman poetry or theology, we 
 should have to cite only from some sacred book of the East, 
 from Confucius or Menu for instance, to show what man can 
 extract from that rich and inexhaustible soil of divine sift, viz., 
 the religious sentiment. 
 
 But what directly concerns us is the superiority that Chris- 
 tianity arrogates to itself over Judaism, and the inferiority in 
 point of Ethics that it ascribes to the latter, inferring therefrom, 
 that it owes this nothing, and that it has reached, by a spon- 
 taneous soar alone, so unprecedented an elevation. As long as 
 these assumptions aimed merely to depreciate Pagan morality, 
 they were, we must confess, in a great measure justifiable. If, as 
 we have just said, Pagan religion and philosophy sometimes ex- 
 aggerated their deserts, their Ethics always lacked that certainty, 
 purity, elevation, and independence, which were the heritage of 
 Judaism, and of which Christianity afterwards partook. The 
 Ethics of Paganism was not certain, because its theology, so far 
 from acquiring influence over minds, missed it rather, by 
 exhibiting its Gods constantly at variance with their own 
 maxims ; it was not pure, because the vilest interests were its 
 usual incentives to action ; it was not elevated, because its views 
 and aspirations did not transcend the horizon of this life ; it was 
 not independent, because, merged at one time in the State, in 
 Politics, at another, enslaved by or interwoven with these, it was 
 hampered by obstacles that continually stopped its free develop- 
 ment. These defects Christianity partly removed, at one time 
 falling short of Hebrew morality, at another, urging the anti- 
 Pagan reaction beyond its proper limits, and injuring itself by 
 such fanaticism and excessive austerity. But finally this religion 
 made morality and humanity take a great spring ; it overturned 
 the altars that were still reeking with innocent blood, closed the 
 dens where prostitution was regarded as a sacred duty, proclaimed 
 the common origin and universal brotherhood of mankind, effaced 
 the brands that egotism, pride, brute force and wealth had put on 
 the brow of the poor, the unhappy, the conquered and the slave. 
 These benefits and many others are imperishable claims to the 
 respect and gratitude of mankind : Judaism finds here her true 
 
JEWISH AXD CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 3 
 
 reflection, and glories in such manifestations ; she admires those 
 devoted children, who issuing from her fold, filled with her 
 spirit, inflamed with that zeal which made the Pharisees scour 
 1 'sea and land to make one proselyte,"* have not brought as 
 they boast the era of the Messiah, far from that, but smoothed 
 the way for his advent and heralded his reign. Yes, the Syna- 
 gogue admires them, and, though crushed by the hand of the 
 Church, has not ceased to declare it, especially by the tongue 
 of Maimonides. These real merits of Christianity have served 
 as a base for enormous pretensions. Without justice, without 
 logic, its Ethics has been declared superior to the Hebrew. 
 Christianity itself, with a wonderful blindness, has given a free 
 rein to prejudice, and permitted the worship of this intoxicating 
 incense ; nay ! it has formally instituted a comparison between 
 both systems, between the Ethics of Moses and Jesus, and has 
 struggled, as in a medical or legal competition, to show the 
 superiority of its receipts to those of its rival. A singular and 
 instructive spectacle ! for if, according to Christian assertion, 
 the excellence of Christian Ethics proves its divine origin, its 
 pretensions lead us back to the lowest earthly regions. For a 
 divine ethical system, a natural sequence to Judaism, would 
 never have parted itself into two orders or degrees ; it would 
 never have said: "You have heard what was told to past 
 generations, but I tell you, etc.;" for this one God would have 
 been ever conscious of his own identity, and therefore ever 
 consistent in thought, will, and laws. 
 
 This is not the only internal contradiction arising from 
 these pretensions. Here, as elsewhere, we have but to express 
 what will suggest itself to the mind of all, has Christianity 
 any other base than that of Judaism? Is it that each has a 
 different God, a different will, a different authority ? Or would 
 evangelical Christianity adopt the doctrine of Marcion (far more 
 reasonable, as we shall hereafter see, than its own), which has 
 made of the God of the Jews and of the God of the Christians 
 two beings, two wills, two laws, in constant antagonism ? No ; 
 for evangelical Christianity both gods are identical ; it is but one 
 will expressing itself by two different instruments. Now, can 
 God be superior to God ? Can the Immutable have now one will, 
 now another ? Can he impose laws in different approximations 
 to perfection ? And must not any declaration of his will, when 
 once made, be consistent with every other expression ? Now, 
 according to the admission of Christianity, God has spoken 
 to the patriarchs, to Moses, and given them a system of Ethics 
 
 * Mtt. xxiii. 15. 
 
4 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 absolutely perfect, because nothing less than that could emanate 
 from God ; otherwise he, too, would be subject to time, accident, 
 and change. But we are told that man is not capable of reaching 
 at a bound the heights of perfection, and that he is essentially a 
 creature of progress. Yes, we reply, and it is for that very 
 reason, and in order that man may attain perfection that God's 
 word is perfect. Man strives to realize it step by step. Like 
 the external world, that issues from God, consisting of imperish- 
 able elements, so the second creation, the ideal world, his 
 word, issues from him perfect and complete. It falls like the 
 first, amid the accidents of time, the fate and conditions of 
 which it partakes. It hides, like the first, in its inmost depths, 
 unknown power for man's discovery, and permits him to realize 
 only by degrees its beauties and its wealth. But both creations, 
 perfect in themselves, are progressive only as regards their 
 realization. No ; the law of God is not progressive, and man, 
 on the other hand, is so only because it is perfect. How, indeed, 
 can we conceive progression without an ideally perfect law, 
 the successive realization of whose traits constitutes progress ? 
 What idea can we have of evolution without a starting point and 
 goal, of a work, without a plan or theory ? 
 
 Now what has Christianity substituted for the God of the 
 Jews, the First-and- the- Last, * the author of the beginning and 
 end of man and of the world ? It has ascribed progression to 
 God himself, at least to his external word; ass'erting that this 
 last bends to circumstances, to custom, even to the weakness 
 of man, has ascribed to him the flexibility of Paul (who is a 
 Jew to Jews and a Gentile to Gentiles), and the base concessions 
 of Jesuits to idolaters ; it has made a god after its own image, 
 like the gods of Homer, instead of making man after the image 
 of God, as Moses teaches. Thus it not only violates common 
 sense (which can ascribe to Deity but one will) but it makes all 
 revelation useless, and by establishing a principle that recoils 
 against itself and imperils each moment its existence, saps 
 its own foundation. With such a theory how could any revela- 
 tion be necessary ? Tell us of a revelation (worthy of the name) 
 that comes to teach man truth he could not "otherwise learn, to 
 give him a theory of moral government and virtue which his 
 unassisted reason could not originate, and this very reason 
 shall bow before it, because the mark of its divine origin will 
 be apparent. But a different revelation, one that only follows 
 step by step the natural developments of man's powers, and 
 that, instead of uttering at once its final word even at the risk 
 
 * Isaiah *liv. 6. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 5 
 
 of being misunderstood, doles out eternal truth as the mind 
 and heart are disposed to receive it such a revelation I say 
 would be at the outset a very suspicious one to a sagacious 
 critic, and above all would be altogether needless as having 
 naught to tell men that they could not tell themselves. 
 
 Much more ; it is in Jewish revelation that we find the 
 titles, promises, and prophecies upon which Christianity is based. 
 Now, what assurance have we that some social, mental, or moral 
 change in man will not require different methods, different 
 laws, and that the Messianic promises will not be in their 
 turn obliterated ? And even though they should be verified in 
 Christianity (which, let us suppose, fulfilled the prophecies), can 
 it pretend to arrest forever the progress of the world ? to have 
 exhausted the divine wisdom and fertility, and consigned God's 
 word to an eternal silence ? to have closed, for its special 
 benefit, the epochs of revelation? 
 
 This Mosaic law, whose permanence seemed foreshadowed 
 by so many miracles, so many resources, has been supplanted 
 you say by another law, another covenant, of which it was 
 but the shadow and forerunner. What tells us that this latter 
 is not likewise a type of and preparation for a purer religion ? 
 Is it because God is exhausted? Or because man has changed 
 his nature? Is it because he has no more social, moral, or 
 intellectual changes, through which to pass? Shall the need 
 of a new revelation, manifesting itself a little more than ten 
 centuries after the first, never again show itself in twenty, 
 thirty, or even fifty centuries after the Gospel? To maintain 
 this is impossible. There is a word which Christianity by its 
 assumption of superiority has attached forever to its existence, 
 to its role in the world ; there is a name, which, after centuries, 
 has become the mark of the greatest schism, the greatest rupture 
 that the Church has as yet undergone namely PROTESTANTISM. 
 But it was Christianity that introduced this very Protestantism 
 into the world by establishing a principle which, from age to 
 age, has recoiled upon itself, and which shall one day open 
 the door to another Christianity, another Messiah. For in the 
 hands of God, evil works its own cure. In short, the Church 
 has had and will have Protestants, only because she herself 
 first protested against Judaism. 
 
 So we see Christianity cannot claim a morality superior to 
 that of Judaism without wounding its own dearest interest, 
 violating logic, and crumbling the very bases upon which 
 are founded all religion and all morality. Let us, however, 
 descend from these high abstractions, where Truth, though 
 
6 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 more brilliant, is, by reason of this very elevation, less tangible 
 for ordinary minds. Let us institute, if possible, a comparison, 
 fixing its conditions and limits, and let us see in the detail 
 if it be from its own, root that Christianity has drawn its 
 ethics, its chief claim to the esteem of mankind; or if it 
 be not rather the natal surroundings, the religion in which it 
 is rooted that supplied it with- the principles and elements 
 which were, alas! but too soon forgotten. 
 
 A question at the outset presents itself ; and, although it may 
 appear at first sight a little strange, we must not neglect it, 
 full sure that its importance will be at once admitted. Are 
 we, in the present comparison, about to compare one system 
 of Ethics with another ? Have we here two homogeneous 
 terms that can be weighed in the same balance so that the 
 worth of each can be estimated. This consideration is clearly 
 of great importance. If it were true that, in comparing 
 Judaism with Christianity (as has been the uniform custom), 
 two systems, two principles, of totally different characters, 
 were compared, and that a mere system of Ethics (Christianity), 
 were weighed against a system of Ethics and of Politics com- 
 bined, or rather against the latter exclusively, no one could 
 maintain that the verdict, whatever it might be, could be just. 
 Now I ask, is it not this precisely that has been hitherto 
 done ? Except some few who have made allowance and 
 that an inadequate one for this two-fold character of the 
 Mosaic law, all, both friends and foes, have merely taken the 
 book of Moses in one hand and the Gospel in the other, and 
 pronounced to which the palm of superiority should be awarded. 
 Nevertheless, all recognize in Judaism two things very distinct 
 as regards the nature, object and means of each; that it consists 
 of a civil as well as a moral code. Doubtless, there is unity 
 in Judaism; its civil code blends in a thousand ways with its 
 moral one, borrowing sometimes the language of the latter, 
 sometimes adorning itself with its holy splendor. Doubtless 
 too, its Ethics serves not only to purify, enlighten and satisfy 
 the conscience, to make good citizens for the heavenly Jeru- 
 salem, but also good patriots, good Israelites, good citizens for 
 the earthly Jerusalem. And, in short, there doubtless exists 
 between both systems a continual interchange of service, a 
 reciprocity highly useful to both. But just as it would be 
 indiscreet to separate these in their practical working at Jeru- 
 salem, so it would be unjust to confound them in a theoretic 
 examination, especially when face to face with an ethical 
 system, which not only has nothing to do with, but even 
 
JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHICS. 7 
 
 repudiates politics, and is its most formidable living adversary. 
 It is then, only strict justice, to distinguish well the ethics of 
 Judaism from its politics; the civil code from the religious; 
 the citizen from the Monotheist ; or to express this difference 
 by two names equally dear to God's people the Jew from 
 the Hebrew, the member of a state government by the Judaic 
 dynasty from the Hebrew, the son of Abraham, the disciple 
 and follower of his faith.* Through not undertanding this 
 truth, the Christian Ethics has been judged superior to that 
 of the Jews, or rather to their politics. Could it be otherwise ? 
 Could a system of civil government^ however pure, however 
 just, ever compete with a system of abstract morality ? Could 
 the duties of a nation be framed upon those of an individual, 
 or could international law be ever successfully supplanted by 
 the "Imitation of Christ?" I shall cite but one striking 
 example of this self-evident truth, viz., the forgiveness of 
 injuries, the very one through which Christianity is thought 
 to approach perfection. Now, try to apply this principle to 
 nations; lay before them those precepts of humility, for- 
 bearance, patience and long suffering that so abound in the 
 Gospel; tell them, if you dare, to allow their cheeks to be 
 smitten, to be spit upon, to swallow in silence, and even to 
 requite with benefits the most atrocious injuries deeds the most 
 sanguinary and see if a nation can maintain itself with such 
 a code, if invasion, conquest, slavery, and annihilation will 
 not be at once the inevitable consequence ? No ! If a country 
 or state must live, if nationality be not an empty term, the 
 moral code of the Gospel can never be the law of nations. And 
 why ? Because a nation has less duties than an individual ; 
 because the number of its duties always diminish as the body 
 politic expands ; being for a family less than for an individual ; 
 for town less than for a family, for a state less than for a single 
 town, and less for all mankind than for any single state. For 
 each of these different centres owes allegiance only to its 
 superior; humanity, for example, has duties only to its God; 
 to naught else should it bend or subordinate itself. Now, if a 
 nation has a right to exist, if its duties consist precisely in 
 disregarding the Ethics of an individual (in its extreme con- 
 sequences at least), if Israel lay under the same necessities as 
 every other nation and under far greater ones still, (encom- 
 passed as it was by ignorance, injustice and barbarism), if it was 
 in this condition by the express will of God, if its existence 
 was inseparably connected with the greatest and most sacred 
 
 * Genlaes xivi 13. 
 
8 JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 interests, with the religious destiny of the whole world, can we 
 be surprised that its law-giver imposed on it the rules indis- 
 pensable to a wise policy, and brought universal charity under 
 the restrictions necessary for the preservation of the nation? 
 And, I dare affirm, that without such measures no earthly 
 power could have saved the people of Israel from speedy 
 destruction. 
 
 Christianity itself, -has felt this full well. It quickly per- 
 ceived that, in the Ethics it prefcched to the world, there 
 was no place for the different nationalities, these large in- 
 dividualities in the still larger family of man. Accordingly 
 from the outset, with one hand it presents the Jews with 
 their new code of morals, with the other it points to that Temple 
 which God and the people, religion and the state had made 
 their most august abode not a memorial stone of which the 
 flames had allowed to remain. Accordingly, beside its ascectic 
 morality it places its ascetic kingdom, its all-spiritual-Messiah, 
 if I may use the expression; and in place of a political liberty 
 it offers its votaries a spiritual one. Strangers to the struggle, 
 the efforts, the sacrifices with which that heroic little band of 
 Jews met the Romans in the last crisis of their national life, 
 the Christians at Pella saw in the fall of Jerusalem and the 
 Temple, the end of the earthly reign of that law whose spiritual 
 overthrow they sought, and the exile of a great nation was 
 the first homage paid to the morality of the Gospel*. 
 
 But a greater field opened before Christianity ; its acts, in- 
 fluence and ethics were now to operate upon countless numbers, 
 upon an empire a thousand times greater than Palestine. We 
 take good care neither to overlook the benefits that this morality 
 heaped upon the wretched of every kind, the comfort and new 
 life that it brought them, nor to re-echo those old Pagan accusa- 
 tions that some modern authors have revived for their own 
 benefit, wherein Christians were looked upon as conspirators, 
 rebels and enemies of the Roman Empire. We shall only 
 examine its relation to the patriotic sentiment, to religion, to 
 love, and to a national existence. Now I say, that neither 
 during the Roman nor any subsequent period had Christianity 
 anything to present to feelings so natural to man j that it only 
 impeded the natural development of these feelings, and that 
 its action was always wavering, always hampered whenever 
 it had to declare itself respecting patriotic duties. Christianity 
 preached a great principle, universal fraternity, a principle 
 taken indeed from, Judaism, but one in no wise tempered, as 
 in the latter system, by national fraternity. On the contrary, 
 
JEWISH AND CHBISTTAN ETHICS. 9 
 
 Christianity made, for the benefit of humanitarian brotherhood, 
 that sacrifice, which the ancient legislators had made, some- 
 times of the individual to the family, by exagerating parental 
 rights, and at others, of the family to the state, by the creation 
 of this last absorbing personality. Christianity, then, skipped a 
 step, and in its turn swept away nationalities from the affection 
 of mankind. Impossible, thenceforth, to regard the political 
 enemy other than a brother ; impossible for the heart, the arm, 
 not to tremble, whenever man, wounded man, or brethren smote 
 each other, all men being according to Christianity, equal that 
 is, in the words of Paul himsell, the Barbarian, Scythian, Greek 
 and Jew. Can we in short, express this great truth more elo- 
 quently or boldly than an eminent writer has lately done: 
 "Patriotism," says he, "exists under the old law, but theore- 
 tically has no place in the new ; and the day the Gospel was 
 preached to the Gentiles was in tendency THE LAST DAY OF 
 NATIONALITIES." And again : " The feeling of nationality, 
 such as swells in the English breast, is an affection essentially 
 Jewish. One might suppose that English society was a con- 
 vention Of the CIRCUMCISED." 
 
 It must be said, however, that this equality was successively 
 understood by Christianity in twa-different ways. At first it was 
 only apathetic and indifferent as to national distinctions, and 
 its Catholicism in this respect was but negative. But it soon 
 changed its spirit ; for, becoming triumphant, it sought to realize 
 this equality, this universal brotherhood in a very tangible 
 manner ; and lo ! the Papacy rose. And so we have, in one 
 way or the other, the destruction of national diversities always 
 arising from an universal apathy or an universal empire. And 
 why ? Because Christianity absolutely lacks a side, the social or 
 political side, either through the extravagance and exclusive- 
 ness of its ethics, or through its ultramundane aspirations, ever 
 on the point of realization ; because with its ethics it had no 
 jurisprudence, with an altar no throne, which in truth it merged 
 in the former. 
 
 We are now about to glance at one of the main dangers, at 
 one of the weakest spots in the Christian ethics ; we are about to 
 see that not only would it be very unjust (as we have shown) to 
 compare a moral system on one side, with a political one on the 
 other that not only has Christianity this gap, this void which 
 has made its existence embarrassed and embarrassing in the 
 world but that its beautiful morality, exquisite as it appears, 
 could not, from its very refinement, evade the consequences of 
 this blank, this want of the political element, which constitutes 
 
10 JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 the weakness at once and the glory of Judaism ; and that the 
 great principle of charity destroyed itself, not being allowed to 
 play its legitimate part with its kindred justice. 
 
 In vain did the new religion know only the spirit ; in vain 
 did it trample under foot, all the interests, all the wants of life ; 
 in vain did it incessantly fix its gaze upon the Kingdom of God, 
 where it was to reign supreme ; in vain did it predict the near 
 advent of this, and plume itself as almost on the verge of the 
 general resurrection, of a universal regeneration, it could not, 
 withal change the nature of things. The world kept on its way, 
 in spite of all predictions to the contrary, and Christianity found 
 itself involved in that world whose destruction it thought at 
 hand, in that society whose transformation into immortal 
 beings it had hoped soon to see, in those interests for which 
 it had neglected to provide, in those rights and duties that 
 political and social life begets. Persecuted at first, Christianity 
 requited itself for the blood it generously shed mingled never- 
 theless with that of the Jews in all parts of the Empire. But 
 its triumph prepared for it a much severer trial. Once master 
 of that people upon which it had not reckoned, it would have 
 escaped all danger, if it had like Judaism a king to place on the 
 throne, a code to give the courts of justice, a policy with which 
 to guide the chariot of State, and if it had taken care, like 
 Judaism, to distinguish worldly, social and political concerns, 
 from those relating to morals, religion and dogmas. But Chris- 
 tianity had only, and was only, a religion ; its law, its state 
 policy, its throne, were respectively, the dogma, the worship of 
 God, and the altar. Master one time, of the world, whom shall 
 it place upon the empty throne ? Who is to hold the sword of 
 the law ? This is the crisis in the history of Christianity. 
 Christianity, with the best intentions in the world, believed it 
 could do nothing better than occupy the throne itself, than seize, 
 itself, the scepter of justice, that is to say, subject to its dogmas, 
 its religion and its laws, the public authority; in other words 
 to enlist law, state, royalty in the service of its religion, to place 
 its dogmas on an equal footing with political institutions, to 
 substitute religion for national duties, and to give ethics the 
 same rank as public virtues; in a word, to substitute for the 
 citizen, conscience. Is this not what is called, in general terms, 
 a state-religion? Now, what is a state-religion? It is con- 
 science treated as a citizen, the mind subjugated, disciplined like 
 the body, one's creed encompassed with penalties, executioners, 
 pyres; it is violence, injustice, tyranny serving a religion all 
 charity. And just because it had only charity, but no idea to 
 
JFWTSH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS- 
 
 justiee, because it advocated only love, and not 
 
 devoted itself to the worship of virtues the in< 
 
 it neglected those inferior perhaps, but equally holy* 
 
 useful, in fine because it aimed at being more thanj-ust, it was 
 
 doomed to be violent. 
 
 And Judaism ? It had a political system ; it did not disdain 
 to mix in the affairs of this world; it offered to the million, 
 daily bread, air, sunlight, protection, good laws, justice to re- 
 spect, a country to love, interests to care for, public virtues to 
 practice, which, though not absolutely spiritual, were far more 
 necessary were (I may affirm) heaven brought to earth, because 
 they are eternal truth eternal beauty and eternal love ever 
 applied to and intermingled with the concerns of life, the Glory 
 (Schechina) which spans the earth. And what is a thousand 
 times more admirable and the proof of its divine origin at 
 the core of this Judaism, so homogeneous and compact, is ever a 
 broad line of demarcation between religion and the state, the 
 citizen and the monotheist, belief and justice, dogmas and the 
 Law ! In it, conscience, the sphere of faith, and the forum, the 
 sphere of politics, never exchanged parts or powers. Never was 
 remorse -supplanted by the scaffold, or hell by death. No-civil 
 penalty for impiety, and no spiritual burden for the citizen. It 
 had a code, solely politic, the law of Moses; and a code, solely 
 religious, tradition. Not that the first has not the same origin 
 and design as the second ; not that the latter does not presuppose 
 and supplement the former ; but the one is rather the guide for 
 the bodj r , and prefers to speak to the citizen, to the people, to 
 their interests, their remembrances, their hopes ; the other is the 
 guide rather of morals and of mind, and appeals more willingly 
 to the conscience and the soul, to their past, their future, their 
 eternal interests. To compare Christian ethics with the first is 
 not only an injustice but an impropriety; for it exposes the 
 nakedness of Christianity exposes that void which has led 
 charity to be less than just, in not reserving a suitable place for 
 the duties and concerns of life. 
 
 But we must compare the ethics of Christianity with the 
 simple unmixed ethics of Judaism. The former, as it is already 
 suspected has doubtless its source chiefly in the sacred writings, 
 but above all in tradition ; it is this last principally that we are 
 about to confront with the ethics of the Gospel. "We shall not 
 then be accused of choosing a ground favorable for the victory of 
 Jewish ethics, so much and so long decried. The Pharisees have 
 been so great a butt for the derision of the Church, and the latter 
 seemed to stand in so little fear of a competition with them, that 
 
12 JEWISH AND CHBISTIAN ETHICS. , 
 
 we hope these same poor Pharisees will be allowed to placo 
 before the judgment-seat of the nineteenth century the articles of 
 their indictment, and the grounds of their secular condemnation. 
 Besides, it is Judaism as it is that we contrast with Christian 
 ethics. And far from imitating those who, fearing a flood, take 
 i?efuge in the mountains, we shall not shield ourselves behind 
 the Bible, (an object of veneration to both), to resist the preten- 
 sions of the Christian ethics. We shall take the rabbinical, 
 traditional Judaism that centuries have made, and we think 
 besides that we shall better serve the cause of criticism by thus 
 studying Christianity in all its birth-surroundings, in the teach- 
 ings and moral philosophy of that time, than by restricting 
 ourselves to an antiquity, whose workings, though unquestion- 
 able, could not have been as precise, as evident or as consecutive? 
 as those of Pharisaical Judaism. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TOT DOCTBINES UPON WHICH THK CHBISTIAN CODE OF MoBALS IS FOUNDED ABOLITIQW 
 
 OF THE LAW HOW IT IS UNDEB8TOOD BY JESUS FAITH WITHOUT WOBKS RUPTUEE 
 BETWEEN CATHOLICISM AND PBOTESTANTISM WITH PAUL, FA!TH, WITHOUT WORKS, 
 SAVES CONTEMPT FOB THE BODY ; MYSTICISM IT ENDS IN IMMOBAUTY AND 
 MATEBIALISM ; PBOOFS FBOM EEASON AND HisieBY GNOSTICISM AND ITS EX- 
 CESSES J ITS SEED IN THE GOSPEL THE SPIBITUALISM OF PAUL, WHAT THE 
 
 LIBEBTY OF SPIBITUAL DEATH THE FAITHFUL, DEAD IN JESUS CHBIST ; OBIGIN 
 OF THIS FICTION THEY BISE WITH HlM ; ANOTHER FICTION, ITS OBIGIN AND 
 EFFECTS UPON MoBALITY THE REDEMPTION "THE LAW, THE CAUSE OF BIN" 
 THE REDEMPTION OF THE JEW, THE CHBISTIAN. 
 
 But before proceeding with this comparison, let us examine 
 whether certain doctrines, forming the basis of -Christian -ethics, 
 are as sure and immoveable as represented. All agree, that a 
 building, however large and splendid, affords- no secure protec- 
 tion, if its solidity be not in proportion to its size. Are the 
 foundations of the Christian ethics, so solid, that unaided, it 
 irrisistably conquers all hearts ? 
 
 An announcement made almost at the birth of Christianity, 
 was calculated to have great influence in moulding the-destiny of 
 its ethics, and that was the abolition of the Law. Our duty 
 at present is not to examine the great question concerning the 
 relations of Jesus to the Law, or to what degree he advocated its 
 preservation or annulment. If we might anticipate what we 
 have to say respecting the Law, we should say that Jesus, think- 
 ing the era of the Messiah identical with that of the resurrection 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 13 
 
 or universal regeneration, believed he was on the eve of legiti- 
 mately abrogating the Law, when the dead, just before rising 
 from their graves, should assume immortal bodies. 
 
 We shall soon have occasion to see what deep roots this belief 
 had in existing Judaism, and how, for want of the reality, of 
 a proper and real resurrection the Christians substituted a figura- 
 tive one a pure fiction. However that may be, the abolition of 
 the Law was early proclaimed by Christianity. Xow, it is 
 easy to imagine into what trouble and confusion this bold stroke 
 would throw the conscience, and what grand dangers a system of 
 ethics, formulized, sanctioned and taught by this very Law 
 whose fall it announced, was about to encounter. We ought to 
 be able to cite facts and illustrations as to the results we indicate, 
 and we shall accordingly soon see them teeming, after we shall 
 have enumerated, the causes which left Christianity, from its 
 very origin, at the mercy of the waves of opinion, and even 
 exposed to destruction. What we wish to state here is the fatal 
 precedent that Christianity established against morality by this 
 abolition of the Law. For mark well : when a nation possesses 
 a revealed code, meant to rule the mind, when in this revelation 
 the entire life of a people is regulated and marked out in ad- 
 vance, when neither the actions, the feelings nor the moral 
 relations cf man with man escape its provisions, when finally the 
 ethical system, of the same parent as the jurisprudence, the 
 political economy, the mode of worship, the religious doctrines, 
 shakes off its authority; when this nation, accustomed for ages 
 to regard this revelation as its rule of conduct in ethics as well 
 as religion, and the most natural ethical precepts as positive laws, 
 is told some fine day that this law "is played out," that it was 
 only the type and shadow of what was to come, that, at best, 
 it was only good for children, that it is the source of " death and 
 si;j," nothing better than "wretched slavery" (Paul), that a law 
 of freedom (?) is about to replace it ; when this great word, free- 
 dom, is sounded in a thousand ways and on all occasions ; much 
 more, when the Gentiles, who know nothing of the law of Moses, 
 hear that a revelation which had provided for ethics" as well as 
 worship, is about to give way to a law of grace, of freedom who 
 does not see that morality is struck down with doctrine, worship 
 and legislation ? Where shall reason take refuge when this great 
 catastrophe arrives? For let it be well understood, here is 
 not a reason of philosophy which, by its own strength, has 
 formed a system of ethics purely rational ; nor yet a dawning 
 reason, that distinguishes what comes from its own nature from 
 within, from what comes to it from without but the reason of 
 
14: JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 antiquity, of all time, of every kind, that admits and recognizes 
 a revelation. What shall it substitute for this ruined ethical 
 system ? It has neither an ethics of philosophy nor of nature to 
 put in its place ; it has only sentiment, and of that it avails itself. 
 This, in my opinion, is the most probable explanation of that 
 predominance of sentiment in the Christian ethics. This is why 
 its first founders incessantly appeal to sentiment and not to 
 reason ; this is the source from which the Christian ethics has 
 drawn the grace, pathos and delicacy that so characterize it ; and 
 hence, too, the horror of polemical disputation, Faith usurping 
 the place of logic and science. 
 
 In vain, truly, would it have appealed to reason, for this 
 would have always opposed to its new masters, that law of 
 Moses, that Judaism, ethical no less than doctrinal and legis- 
 lative, given by the very God that was preached yet repudiated. 
 In vain would it have added that the will of God, changed as to 
 all else, had remained fixed and unaltered as to ethics ; in vain 
 would it have laboriously gleaned and sifted from civil and 
 religious ordinances, from doctrine and ritual, those moral pre- 
 cepts blended and incorporated with the general system, to 
 construct something independent, sacred and inviolable from the 
 wreck of Judaism. Keason would have rejected these arbitrary 
 distinctions. It would have pointed to the same God, the same 
 revelation giving the most sublime moral precepts, as, To love 
 one's neighbor as one's self, in conjunction with the humblest, 
 the most mysterious of ritual prohibitions against the mixing of 
 seeds. It would have said that if the will of God changed on one 
 point it might change on another ; that no difference of lan- 
 guage, no mark, in this system so homogeneous, indicated what 
 was for a time, and what was for ever ; that the ceremonials of 
 the system, its rewards, punishments, and exhortations gave the 
 ethical part no special, independent or privileged place ; that 
 quite the contrary, penalties the most terrible, rewards the most 
 munificent were attached to the ceremonial laws, exactly, per- 
 haps, because they have such weak roots in the heart and reason 
 of man. Such is the language of reason. And this language was, 
 in all probability actually uttered, not only by the faithful, but 
 forced likewise, by logic and good sense, from the apostles them- 
 selves, and above-all from those who took the most active part in 
 the abolition of the Law. Among the latter the chief place 
 certainly belongs to Paul. Now what is the new principle 
 proclaimed by him ? It is faith ; faith as the highest virtue 
 enjoined on mankind, faith opposed as such not only to science, 
 to vain disputes, to vain jargon, as we have elsewhere observed, 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 15 
 
 but also faith opposed as such to works; that is to say, if one 
 believes in Jesus, the God Messiah, in his personal divinity and 
 mission, in the efficacy of his death, in his resurrection, he has 
 no longer need of works to obtain salvation, 
 
 We should be sorely grieved, could it be thought for an 
 instant that we wished to calumniate the Christian ethics. No 
 one disputes the truth of what we are about to say. Christians 
 of every sect and color agree, that Paul, the great Christian legis- 
 lator and moralist, teaches the doctrine of justification by faith 
 without works. But the principle thus laid down appeared so 
 revolting, so opposed to the noblest instincts of the human heart, 
 so contrary to the sentimental morality Christianity was preach- 
 ing, that restrictions were soon made to narrow its scope. While 
 Protestantism, obeying logic and reason alone, drew boldly from 
 this principle all its consequences and proclaimed moral works 
 useless and pernicious, faith alone being sufficient for salvation ; 
 Catholicism, on the other hand, having an external authority, 
 social and political, being itself at once a government and a 
 religion, recoiled in terror, from these destructive consequences, 
 from this licentious morality, and interpreted the "works" of 
 Paul in the most restricted sense, namely as the works of the 
 Law, as the practice of the Mosaical code, and declared, against 
 the Protestants in the council of Trent, the necessity of good 
 works. It was a return to the old Hebrew ethics, it was a total 
 rejection of the Apostle of the Gentiles, it was a great diminution 
 of the importance, the efficacy of the redemption. 
 
 Accordingly, we see the Protestants use towards the Catholics 
 the same language Paul used towards the Pharisees and Judaizing 
 Christians, and class the Catholics with the Jews. " The Catholic 
 doctors, says Mosheim, "confound the Law with the Gospel, and 
 represent everlasting happiness as the reward of good works. Is 
 it not here lies the true sense, the veritable intention of Paul ?" 
 This is the ground upon which, as we have just said, the great 
 battle between Protestants and Catholics took place. The ethics 
 of Paul is, in our opinion, that indeed which reason and inde- 
 pendent criticism gave him through the mouth of Protestantism. 
 The arguments and verbiage of Paul are express thereon. He 
 presents us, as an example of his theory, Abraham, justified not 
 by works but by faith.* Now, the works of Abraham, which 
 "were not reckoned to him for righteousness," according to 
 Paul, were not, as far as I know, works of the Law, which had 
 not as yet been given, but truly moral works, in the strictest 
 sense ; charity, justice, hospitality, philanthropy, teaching, 
 
 * Bom. iv. 1, 2, 3, 4. 
 
16 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 virtue, monotheism sown among the Gentiles. And, neverthe- 
 less, Abraham was not justified by his works, but indeed by his 
 faith. Could any one, who referred only to the works of the 
 Law, so speak ? And, furthermore, I affirm, that if the example 
 chosen by Paul be altogether conclusive, the language used and 
 the consequences drawn are altogether unmistakeable : "For 
 what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was 
 counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that work- 
 eth is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt."* Here, 
 then, we have all title to recompense, all meritorious works 
 declared null. This is not all: "But to him that worketh 
 not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his 
 faith is counted for righteousness, "f Thus, no doubt is pos- 
 sible without works, and however wicked, one's faith alone 
 in him who justifies the wicked, saves. Do we want more? 
 Hear Paul, in continuation : " Even as David also describeth the 
 blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 WIHOUT WORKS, saying : 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are 
 forgiven and whose sins are covered. He to whom the Lord will 
 not impute sin. 1 " That is to say, according to the sense given by 
 Paul to these words of David, the grace of faith confers remission 
 of sin, the imputation of righteousness. And in Romans (iii. 27), 
 "boasting" is declared "excluded," not by the "law of works," 
 but by the " law of faith." And so in the Epistle to the Gala- 
 tians (ii. 16), he teaches that man is not justified by the works of 
 the Law (without any distinction), but solely by faith in Jesus 
 Christ. It is true that in the third Epistle to the Romans, verse 
 31, the Apostle declares that he does not wish to "make void 
 the law by faith," but on the contrary, to "establish" it; and 
 that in the Epistle to the Galatians (ii. 17) he exhorts against 
 sinning, but, in the first place, that was because he imitated in 
 this respect the language of the Master, who saw in Christianity 
 only whatever was spiritual and permanent, real and tangible in 
 the old law itself ; and in the second, because he himself felt all 
 the danger of his principles, foresaw the immorality that might 
 arise in the world under the shield of faith alone justifying. 
 In fine, I affirm, that if he condemns sin, if he does not want all 
 the license consistent with faith, it is for the sake of expediency, 
 and for a purely secondary consideration. For, mark well, it is 
 not in the name of truth, justice or virtue, absolutely, that Paul 
 permits not sin under the rule of faith, but it is because faith* 
 fully equal to the pardon of every crime, could not very well be 
 made the accomplice and instrument of evil, nor "Christ the 
 * Rom vi. C. t Bom. iv. 3-4. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS* 17 
 
 minister of sin." See to what a point Christianity must descend 
 to find a prop for its ethics, after having taken away its old and 
 natural base, the Law ! 
 
 Would we glance at the necessary and natural links that, in 
 the minds of Christians, united good works with the law-making 
 both solid and inseparable. They are that Paul, who wants faith 
 without works, is the greatest enemy to the ceremonial law ; and 
 that, on the other hand, James, perhaps the most conservative 
 apostle and the advocate of the necessity of works, is also the 
 most favorable to the law. 
 
 This is not the only peril that Christianity made its ethics 
 incur. Is there no danger in this contempt for the body, for 
 "this sinful flesh that hampers us, and that we should detest," 
 and in Christianity's launching its anathemas against matter, 
 and making this the object of its rabid tirades ? Are self-denial, 
 martyrdom, heroism, the only results? We admit, willingly, 
 that contempt of the body, when made a rule of life, begets 
 often marvellous virtues, which the world admires, and that it 
 proved a powerful support against the rude shocks Christianity 
 at first encountered. But besides the world, there is a power 
 called logic, which, sooner or later, draws from every principle 
 all the conclusions it involves. Xow, it can be fearlessly asserted, 
 that from contempt of the body, of the flesh, as it was understood 
 and practised by Christianity, must one day come the vilest 
 materialism, the most unbridled licentiousness, the most shock- 
 ing immorality. Doubtless, there appears to be nothing so 
 paradoxical, so incredible as the union of contempt for the body 
 with sensuality. But logic and history prove that this is not 
 only possible but almost always inevitable. What does logic 
 teach? That one may be a materialist and addicted to all carnal 
 excesses in two different ways. Matter may be paid an ex- 
 travagant worship, be thought alone worthy of our care and love, 
 be considered as the whole of man, over whom it should hold 
 despotic sway, and that no rein or restriction should be put on its 
 demands. But the materialism of which we speak is of another 
 kind ; it is when a super-refinement of spiritualism cuts assunder 
 the constituent parts of our being, and by care and effort detaches 
 the spirit from its earthly shrine ; when, by dint of zeal, self- 
 denial and indefatigable perseverance it succeeds in isolating the 
 noblest part of our nature, in snapping all the links that bind it 
 to the body, and in giving it an existence absolutely independent 
 of the necessities and reactions of the flesh ; when through this 
 gulf of separation it succeeds in attaining this vaunted apostolic 
 liberty, wherein the spirit, no longer bound to earth, soars to a 
 
18 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 sphere where the echo of life's joys and woes do not-come. A 
 great proof, doubtless, of the nobleness of our nature, but like- 
 wise a perilous flight, a fatal separation ! since the seductive 
 liberty gained for the spirit sets free also all the vilest instincts 
 of the animal. No more influence now, it is true, of the body 
 upon the spirit, but also no more control of the body by the 
 soul. Why should it descend to concern itself about a miserable 
 animal? Why should it dwell with a thing so full of care, 
 turmoil and disorder, to be its governor and guide ? This is how 
 an excessive contempt for the flesh ends in materialism, as we 
 have just seen that the vilest materialism springs from too great 
 an esteem and consideration for the flesh. This is the teaching of 
 logic. Does experience speak less loudly? Does not history 
 show us that whenever mysticism allows itself full rein, it is 
 inevitably dragged into the most monstrous excesses, the most 
 ignoble pleasures, sometimes by the impetuosity of a body aban- 
 doned to itself, and, what is not a little singular, at others, by a 
 sensuality regulated, established, sanctioned in advance by that 
 very spiritualism which, a little while ago, disdained to enjoin 
 on the body order, temperance, virtue, duty ? 
 
 Far from us the thought of renewing against Christianity 
 the old pagan accusations ! Far from us the thought of charging 
 to the evangelical Christians those banquets, festivals and orgies 
 that scandalized the decent folks of Paganism ! We far prefer to 
 sav, with the Christian apologist, that it was the -Gnostics solely 
 wno astonished and shocked the world by these hideous exhi- 
 bitions. Still the Gnostics were Christians, wicked ones, if you 
 will, disorderly and sensual, but accepting the dogmas, principles 
 and preaching of Christianity, though attaching themselves 
 chiefly to Peter and Paul, as we shall show elsewhere; and, 
 above all, the causes and seeds of these strange abuses lay truly 
 in the Gospels. Do they not announce in every page the con- 
 tempt and condemnation of the flesh ? Do they not declare its 
 works null, useless for salvation, provided there be faith in Jesus 
 Christ ? Do they not advocate a worship in spirit as the highest 
 degree of human perfection ? Do they not propose to man, as his 
 noolest task here below, the detachment of his spirit from the 
 flesh of sin, so as to gain this "liberty of the children of God," 
 procured by faith, and not by works, the evidence, per contra, of 
 lapse and slavery ? .And, to connect this ethical system with its 
 speculative side, do they not sacrifice and fuse matter, the in- 
 ferior mother, to the weal of mind, of the world to come, of 
 idealism, of the superior mother. Do they not term true Chris- 
 tians the spiritual 9 Now, if we wish to know exactly what ia 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 19 
 
 the spiritual of the apostle we have but to-view the-neoplatonism 
 of Plotinus, Porphery and Proclus, the Gnostic system, and, 
 above both, the corresponding distinctions of the Cabala. What 
 do the first two establish on this score ? They divide, as we 
 know, men into three classes : the Hyloists, (the lowest rank) 
 that is to say, the "carnal" of Paul, who were, according to the 
 Gnostics, the Pagans ; the Psychics, or Animists, and these were, 
 according to the same, the Jews and the non-Gnostic Christians ; 
 last^ the Pneumatics, the spiritual, and they were exclusively the 
 Gnostics. Now we know what was the "Pneumatic" of the 
 Gnostics : man, above law, usages, virtue, for whom all is good, 
 all allowable, since his soul, in spite of any liberty the body may 
 assume, can contract, henceforth, no stain, having an existence 
 quite apart from the flesh that surrounds it. We do not quite 
 assert that the spiritualism of Paul was of this kind ; or that the 
 contempt of the body and of its works was pushed by him to this 
 point ; but if he be not the type and model of the system he is, 
 beyond question, its prime cause, and the Pneumatic of Gnostic- 
 ism is, at the very least, a Paulite in excess. 
 
 We have tried to fix the meaning of Paul's "spiritual" 
 through its reflection in the "Pneumatic" of the Gnostics. We 
 may, with advantage, as a counter-test, compare both with their 
 type, Cabalistic spiritualism. We may boldly affirm that the 
 tripple distinction of the Gnostics, and the spiritual of Paul 
 become quite intelligible only by linking them with the equi- 
 valent Cabalistical doctrine. The Cabalists say that man has a 
 threefold nature; the breath, (NEFESCH) which has its root in 
 the emanation, Malkhout (called also Nefesch) ; the ROTJACH or 
 soul, that is connected with the logos, with the tiphereth that 
 bears its name ; lastly, the NESCHAMA, that has its source in 
 the Bina, in the Holy Spirit, superior, like that which is in man. 
 This is not all ; the same classification of men by their predomi- 
 nant nature is made by the Cabalists as by the Gnostics. With 
 those, as with these, the great mass of the faithful attain only to 
 nefesch, to Malkhout, to the hylism of the Neoplatonists and the 
 Gnostics, to the flesh of Paul ; their portion is the letter, the 
 bondage of the letter, as Paul says the literal sense (peschat) of 
 the Law, and they bear, like Paul's charnels, the name slaves, 
 for the malkout itself is called slave, or else they are given the 
 title of eggs not yet laid (betsim). In this system, as in the 
 other, we see those to whom the Rouach has been allotted, who 
 have their root in the Tiphereth, the Logos ; that is to say the 
 Psychist?, the learned, the scribes, the doctors of Paul and the 
 Gospels, who reach the legal, philosophical and theoretic sense of 
 
20 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 the Law, and these- are chickens scarcely hatched (efrochim). 
 Lastly, we arrive at the elect souls, supported by Neschama, 
 that is to say, the Pneumatics of the Gnostics and Plotinus, the 
 spiritual of Paul, who have their source and seat in Bina, (the 
 superior spirit) and to whom Cabalistic science (sod) unveils its 
 mysteries ; these are the free, for Bina is called Freedom (deror, 
 cherout) ; and far from being slaves, eggs or chickens, they are 
 the legitimate sons, children entitled to the patrimony. See 
 how the rays, scattered everywhere through this work, converge 
 to this luminous point! The spirituality to which Christians 
 are invited is naturally linked to the Cabalistic model of the 
 Holy Spirit, the Bina ; both make the same use of the study and 
 dissemination of the Cabalistic mysteries, that confer exactly 
 the title and rights of the spiritual (mare demischmeta). By the 
 same system, for raising themselves to the Bina, they acquired 
 the title children, which, as opposed to that of slaves, the 
 Cabala used long before Christainity. They acquired at the same 
 time the " liberty" proper to this degree, one of its most charac- 
 teristic designations, which the Cabala never used in its practical 
 sense, (unless as regards a soul freed from the bonds of the body) 
 but which Christianity first, and then the Gnostics so strangely 
 abused. This last consideration leads us to speak of another 
 cause still that makes the foundation of the Christian ethics 
 weak and insecure, that opens the door to every abuse, and 
 though producing noble acts through the ascendancy of the soul 
 over the body, also gives the latter all the vices of an ignorant 
 and ungoverned slavery. What we are about to say is, at first 
 sight so improbable, that, had we not the proofs ready, we would 
 not dare state it. One of the doctrines of Rabbinical Judaism, 
 very natural, common enough and almost useless to teach, was 
 one referring to certain obituary customs. Already had the 
 Bible and the Hebrew prophets, highly prizing life, said in a 
 thousand places that the law, virtue, the commands of God, 
 cease at the door of the tomb; that the dead no more praise the 
 Lord ; that the sepulchre gives forth no song of thanks ; passages 
 which have been given in a materialistic sense, but which, for 
 orthodox Judaism, is quite another thing as we see. Pharisaism 
 forniulizes them into one general saying, the terms of which are 
 of special importance in order to penetrate the true meaning of 
 many evangelical passages and especially from Paul. The Phari- 
 sees say : "With the dead is liberty (from the Psalms), when one 
 is dead he is freed from precepts." It is almost incredible, but 
 this is the sole pivot upon which the words and thoughts of Paul 
 incessantly turn, in the thousand places where he speaks of the 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 21 
 
 liberty" of the dead. Here is the origin, the cause of one of the 
 boldest fictions that ever emanated from the human mind a 
 fiction, the consequences of which were incalculable. Paul wants 
 the faithful to identify themselves with Christ, to believe that 
 they are his very embodiment, and that their flesh is condemned, 
 crucified and dead with him. By this death which they share 
 with him they acquire the most precious freedom, viz., the 
 freedom from the law. Can the law rule a dead body ? Can it 
 extend its sceptre beyond the tomb ? Can it exact from a dead 
 man the practice of its rites and ceremonies ? 
 
 And, furthermore, to touch on another point, suggested by the 
 words of Paul himself, what is the Cabalistic doctrine regarding 
 original sin, spiritual new-birth? Is it not the law or death 
 which it names as the sole means of making the ticcoun or repa- 
 ration for the first sin? Well, of these two means, says Paul, 
 we have chosen the last. We are-dead dead, indeed, with Jesus ; 
 we are in him and he is in us; he has died for all; he has 
 crucified in himself our flesh of sin; by dying on the cross he has 
 fulfilled for us the whole Law. Behold us, then,- in full life, come 
 into the precious liberty of pure- souls, and no one can henceforth 
 charge the dead with neglect of the Law. Have we transcended 
 the thoughts and expressions of Paul himself? Then let us cite 
 his words : " Our flesh is considered as dead if Christ is in us. 11 
 "He who is~dead is freed from sin." Rom. vi, 7. But what ia 
 much more important : " Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to 
 them who know the Law) that is, to those who were not igno- 
 rant of the Pharisaical ideas as to the duration of its observance 
 know ye not that the Law hath dominion over a man as long as he 
 liveth?" And having exemplified his position by saying that a 
 woman is free to marry after her husband's death, he continues, 
 (v. 4) : "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the 
 Law, by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, 
 to him who is raised from the dead. For when WE WERE in the 
 flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in 
 our members. But now we are delivered from the Law, being 
 dead(wQ follow in this place- the true translation of Diodata) to 
 that wherein we were held." Much more ; the sin of Adam, the 
 cause of the Law with the Cabalists and Paul, is expiated by the 
 death of Jesus ; he dies, is buried, and his disciples are likewise 
 with him. Our flesh has been condemned to suffer for all in 
 Jesus. There is then no more condemnation for those who are in 
 Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. * * * 
 For what was impossible to the Law (to give perfect liberty in 
 atoning for even original sin) in that it was weak through the 
 
22 JEWISH AND CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 flesh, God, sending hisown son in the likeness-of sinful flesh r and 
 for sin condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteousness 
 of the Law might be fulfilled in us. (Rom. viii, 1-4) 
 
 We shall not multiply citations. A simple reading of Paul's 
 writings will show their spirit much better than detached frag- 
 ments. What they clearly testify is the strange abuse that is 
 made of a simple fiction, and the consequence drawn from it with 
 incredible coolness, viz. : the abolition of the Law. But in this 
 tomb of the Law in this inaction of the dead, shall not morality 
 itself be annihilated ? Have we not to fear that this defunct will 
 free himself from virtue, from moral obligations, as well as from 
 ceremonial injunctions? And is there, moreover, no danger that 
 those members, said to be dead, should refuse to perform the most 
 holy duties, or that the spirit, having attained its natural free- 
 dom, should think itself no longer obliged to lay any restraint on 
 the flesh which surrounds it, but which is already dead and 
 crucified in Jesus ? 
 
 But the fiction continues : These faithful, dead and buried 
 with Jesus, rise with him ; our flesh, too, is considered as 
 risen with Jesus. We are dead to the Law that we may 
 belong to another, viz., to him who is risen from the dead ; 
 and Jesus, our brother, is the first born from the dead. No 
 doubt possible. For Jesus, and, after him, for his disciples, the 
 era of the resurrection, the renewing of nature, the resurrection 
 of bodies was about to commence ; and for the successors of 
 Jesus, it had already come in his own person, in his body gone 
 living from the tomb and become the first-born of the dead. 
 But what gives this fiction quite an exceptional importance is 
 the sense it took from its contact with the doctrines of the day. 
 What did the Pharisees understand by the resurrection ? Beyond 
 doubt it took in not only human bodies called to a new life, 
 furnished with superior organs and powers, but also the whole of 
 nature in a general renovation, in a new birth that was to change 
 the aspect of nature ; and it would be, doubtless, both a curious 
 and instructive study to compare this doctrine with its ancient 
 or modern imitations. The Pharisaic school, in accord on this 
 point, differed as to the time of the general resurrection, and as to 
 its connexion with the Messianic era. One party made these two 
 eras absolutely contemporaneous, and not only was the Messiah to 
 usher Israel into an era of prosperity, safety and liberty, but also 
 to give the signal for the renovation and rebirth of nature, of 
 which the most solemn and striking event would naturally be the 
 resurrection of the dead. The other party viewed things in quite 
 a different light. Placing the resurrectional era at the remotest 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN 
 
 possible period, they regarded the coming of 
 
 a simple social change, wherein the laws of natiii 
 
 the same, and things go on as usual ; or, to sum 
 
 an adage, Nothing be changed except slavery to liberty. We need 
 
 not say to which of these schools Christianity belonged. For it 
 
 no interval, no possible distinction between the Messianical and the 
 
 resurrectional era ; and though the contrary doctrine conclusively 
 
 prevailed in Judaism, the sychronism of the two eras alone found 
 
 favor with Christianity. 
 
 From this first difference arose another. Although the 
 Pharisees protracted as much as possible the reign of the Law, 
 yet they made it cease at the threshold of the resurrection. As 
 the material world was to undergo a complete change, so a new 
 law, springing from new social conditions, was to supplant the 
 old religion. On that new earth, in the midst of new beings and 
 new conditions, the thought of God, the law of God, self-sufficing 
 and naturally self-conserving, would change in its applications as 
 it changes even here below, according to circumstances, to bodies, 
 to relations, as it is applied to world, sun or star. Here is the 
 origin and true sense of this mass of sentences, propositions, 
 similitudes, in which the idea of a new law, a new covenant, and 
 annulled prohibitions shines through images and allegories that 
 have been so often used pervertedly against Jewish orthodoxy, 
 and that Christian polemics has incessantly thrown in the face of 
 the rabbis. These were the very ideas that prevailed among the 
 Judao-Christians at the abolition of the Law, just as in general 
 all that subsequently became a weapon in the hands of established 
 Christianity, had been once an originating power, a cause in 
 primitive Christianity. Nothing easier, nothing more inevitable 
 after what we have said, than the abolition of the Law. The era 
 of the Messiah being identified completely in the minds of the 
 primitive Christians with that of the resurrection (this having 
 already commenced with the resurrection of Jesus, the first-born 
 of the dead), and the whole church, deeming the destruction and 
 renovation of the world imminent, the first conclusion was that 
 the law of Moses was about to be superseded by another law more 
 in unison with the semi-spiritual state of the new society. In 
 vain was this expectation disappointed from day to day ; in vain 
 did the resurrection proper keep ever retreating towards the future, 
 and in vain were people already, as we learn from the Epistles, 
 devoured by impatience. Never mind ; its shade, its image, a 
 resurrection quite fictitious can always be substituted for the real 
 resurrection ; it can be taught, that the faithful, dead with Jesus, 
 are raised with him ; that the reign of the resurrection, of the 
 
24 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS- 
 
 new birth commenced with the resurrection of Jesus, and thus 
 the abolition of the Law <?an always progress. 
 
 We need not dwell at length on the peril in which ethics, 
 religion and practical morality were placed by such a system. 
 This equivocal position created by Christianity in the actual order 
 of things ; this society, which is no longer the human society that 
 the actual laws would have, nor yet the society of the resurrection, 
 such as it will be one day ; this systematized contradiction between 
 existence as it should be and existence as it was, between the 
 resurrection as a hypothesis and life as a thesis ; this fiction of 
 daily and hourly recurrence was it calculated to strengthen 
 sceptical minds, wavering wills, or those of selfish passions, in 
 the worship and love of the good? All relations about to cease, 
 all ties to be broken, society to disappear, and this ephemeral 
 life to have, perhaps, no morrow; all affections, wants, tears, 
 rights, duties, the living, throbbing reality of life sacrificed to an 
 abstraction, to a chimera, to a rabbinical subtlety of Saul's is 
 such a system-calculated to win people inevitably to the perform- 
 ance of duty, to a respect for all rights, to a veneration for the 
 affections ? But these loves, rights, duties are nothing now in the 
 rights acquired by the resurrection, nothing but an empty name, 
 an appearance that shall soon dissolve to smoke. So that here, as 
 elsewhere, morality shares the fate of the law ; and, if new legal 
 relations are about to be established in the new society for, 
 according to Jesus himself, in the new world are to be no more 
 marriages new moral relations must be thenceforth the guide of 
 our conduct. But the abolition of the law, the death and resur- 
 rection of Jesus the causes, as we have just seen, of doubt and 
 weakness in the Christian ethics themselves contain what 
 compromises, no less-seriously, morality. This is the Redemption. 
 Now, the idea of a redemption lessens in many ways at once the 
 value, beauty and grandeur of morality. What is the Redemp- 
 tion, and what does it suppose? It supposes a state of innocence 
 anterior to sin, and wherein the redemption by the blood of the 
 lamb can replace man ; it supposes sin itself, and the expiatory 
 sacrifice of the God-Messiah. Let us see the share, good or bad, 
 that these three elements have in the formation of the Christian 
 ethics. Is this restoration to a state-of innocence, to Adam's state 
 before sin, unattended by danger? Judaism also proposed to its 
 adherents a means of regaining the privileges lost by the first 
 transgression. It also had an Incarnate Word to work this 
 miracle ; but this word was the thought of God embodied in the 
 Law, maintaining itself from age to age, reinstating man, his 
 actions and his life, and through him the whoJp Creation. But 
 
JEWISH AND CHPJSTIAN ETHICS. 25 
 
 the last act of this great drama, the return to Adam's condition, 
 to paradise, took place at the era of the resurrection, when men, 
 improved by the regenerating works of the Law, by the trials of 
 life, by the slow and progressive initiation of actual existence, 
 should assume bodies like Adam's before his sin. Until then the 
 regeneration is not complete, sin has not abandoned his prey; 
 the chain by which it holds us falls off indeed, link by link, but 
 the last link is broken only by the tomb. Must Christianity wait 
 so long ? No ; doubtless, for to it the door of the resurrection lies 
 already open ; this state we have reached ; in this we live, if it be 
 true that the resurrection of Jesus and of the just at the time of 
 his death, are the first fruits of the general resurrection, and he 
 the first born of the dead. Innocent as Adam, ignorant as he, 
 because the fatal fruit is considered as never having been eaten, 
 subjected not to the real laws that rule the present physical world, 
 but to those of the sinless world, to those that shall rule it after 
 the resurrection, to fictitious laws, to an imaginary world, to this 
 resurrection that ought to be inaugurated by Jesus, how should 
 we be less free, less capable of sin and evil than Adam himself, 
 had he never tasted the forbidden fruit ? 
 
 We understand very well the difficulty that a modern will 
 have in admitting these conclusions. We admit that the religious 
 instinct, the pure morals, the sacred traditions which Christianity 
 drew from the Synagogue, fought effectually against the power of 
 logic, against the enticement to the licentiousness which these 
 doctrines authorized. But radical vice is no less visible in the 
 principles ; and their fruits bitter enough soon showed them- 
 selves in those Adamites of the first and twelfth centuries, in the 
 Turlupines of the fourteenth, in the Picards of the fifteenth 
 century; all of whom took their starting-point from the 
 principles which we denounce. 
 
 Let us now see the effects of original sin (as understood by 
 Christianity), especially in its relations to the Law. We can 
 scarce credit our senses, as we see the great difficulties of his 
 position, the contest with orthodox Judaism, the hatred and sworn 
 destruction to the law of Moses, drive Paul to those straits in 
 which morality, that plank of the wreck he wished to save, must 
 be lost. Paul has a theory which Georgias, Hobbes, or the 
 deceased Proudhon, the inventor of anarchy, would not have 
 disowned, and which, once admitted, would be the coup de grace 
 to all justice, all law, all morality, all society namely, that not 
 only is the Law a result of the first sin, but that it constitutes and 
 is the cause of our sins that without the Law there is no sin, and 
 that consequently you have but to suppress the Law to make sin 
 
26 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 disappear. Nothing can be more-exact than the statement : It is 
 through the Law that we know sin.* The Law worketh wrath ; 
 for where there is no Law there is no transgression. f By one man 
 sin entered into the world (speaking to those who wished to liuiit 
 the sense of the word sin to transgressions against the Mosaic 
 Law) ; for, until the Law, sin was in the word ; but sin is not 
 imputed where there is no law.J And further on: u For as by 
 one man's disobedience many were made sinners (probably in 
 allsorts of sin) so by the obedience of one shall many be made 
 righteous " (probably, also, in all sorts of righteousness, moral and 
 Mosaic). Moreover , the Law entered, that offense might abound.^ 
 This is enough, but it is not all : Wlien we were in the flesh (we 
 are at present in spiritual life, under the law of the-spirit and not 
 of the letter), the motions of sins, which were by the Law 
 (meaning sinful affections) did work in our members to bring 
 forth fruit unto death. "But now we are delivered from the Law, 
 being dead to that wherein we were held; that we should-serve 
 in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." | Can 
 we still doubt that the moral laws as well as the ceremonial were 
 included in these singular theories ? Let us say so if we can ? 
 The Law is not given for the just, but for sinners, and for those 
 who cannot be classified, for people without religion, 1st and 
 2d commandment; for the profane, 3d commandment; for 
 murderers of parents, 5th commandment; for homicides, 6th 
 commandment; for fornicators, 7th commandment; for men- 
 stealers, 8th commandment, (as understood by the Pharisees, 
 showing what studies and influences inspired the apostle) ; for 
 liars, 9th commandment ; and for perjurers, 10th commandment. 
 But this is nothing to what follows : "What shall we say then? 
 Is the Law sin ? God forbid. Nay, I HAD NOT KNOWN SIN BUT 
 BY THE LAW; for I had not known lust, except the Law had 
 said: 'Thou shalt not covet.' But sin, taking occasion by the 
 commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For 
 without the Law sin was dead. For I was once alive without the 
 Law, but when the commandment came sin revived, and I died."^f 
 Do we wish language still more exact and serious ? u The sting of 
 death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law."** Much more ; 
 the ministration of the Law is a ministration of condemnation, ft 
 And as the corollary to all these axioms : "There is therefore no 
 longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ-Jesus, who 
 walk not after the flesh but after the spirit." See what is asserted. 
 
 * Bom. iii. 20. t iv. 15. J v. 12-131 
 
 . v. 19 20. U vii. 6-6. T Bom. vii. 7-9, 
 
 ** 1 Cor. xv. 56. ft 11 Cor. iii. 9. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 27 
 
 The only sign by which we recognize^n is by the prohibition, and 
 the sole distinctive characteristic of evil is its condemnation. It is 
 the Law that originates at its pleasure good or evil, and we have but 
 to change, to abolish the Law that all sin may likewise disappear. 
 
 Nevertheless, certain as we are that such is the meaning of 
 Paul's language, and that these principles lead directly to the 
 subversion of the simplest principles of right and wrong, we must 
 not withhold our conviction that Paul's brain and heart revolted 
 against the possible deductions ; and one of the best proofs of our 
 correctness is to see Paul himself guarding against the possible 
 application of his teachings, so apt to let loose upon the world the 
 most dreadful vices and abuses. "What, then ?" he cries, "shall 
 we sin because we are not under the Law, but under grace?"* 
 This was the time to escape at once, or never, from this fatal 
 consequence, by loudly proclaiming that distinction which some 
 theologians have infelicitously established in the Law itself, 
 between the ceremonial laws which Paul wished to abolish, and 
 the moral laws which he wished to preserve. 
 
 Why then did he, too, not use it ? Why, if he admitted it, 
 did he not seize upon this distinction so simple, natural and 
 convenient to free himself from the difficulty ? Paul, however, 
 does not seem even to dream of this. He prefers to entangle 
 himself in a labyrinth of we shall not say sophisms but 
 dialectical subtleties and syllogisms, quite Talmudical, difficult 
 to follow, of which the most probable conclusion, arrived at with 
 slow, uncertain and embarrassed steps, is this: That the new 
 state being a servitude to Justice or to God, instead of the old 
 one which was a servitude to sin, the deliverance from the latter 
 does not dispense us from paying due homage to the former, that 
 is, from conforming to the divine will, by which alone we are freed 
 from the yoke of the Law. Here is a rather obscure word-battle ; 
 but it is not our fault, nor even Paul's ; it is, on the contrary, to 
 his credit, for by it alone can he escape the frightful consequences 
 which his principles, rigorously used, could not fail to bear. 
 
 In short, if the innocence and sin which the redemption sup- 
 poses are little favorable to Christian ethics, shall the redemption 
 itself be more so, the redemption or the sacrifice of a God-man, 
 this remedy applied to the old sore of humanity ? 
 
 Judaism, too, as we have said, recognizes a Word (Tipheret, 
 Logos) ; it styles it, additionally, the Law, Torah ; it believes in 
 its incarnation in the Malkhout, the Torah schebealpe, tradition; 
 and the office of this Word or Torah, descended to us, the guide 
 of our thoughts and actions, is to efface gradually the marks of 
 
28 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 the old slavery, to atone for the sin of the first man. But how 
 does the redemption work in Judaism ? By making of man 
 himself; of his conscience; soul, and will, the first, chief, and I 
 had almost said the only means of his renovation, in summoning 
 him to open his mind and heart to the teachings, exhortations, 
 light and warmth emanating from the divine word, so that the 
 whole inner man be transformed, his strength aroused, his powers 
 expanded, and he himself alone brought to work, under the eye 
 and hand of God, for his own salvation. In short, the redemption 
 of Judaism is altogether from within, because its Word is so too, 
 because its dogma, ethics and worship have no reality or sphere 
 here below, except so far as man seizes, assimilates and realizes 
 in himself the perfections they contain. Without this assimila- 
 tion of the Divine Word, this all-penetrating bread, this perpetual 
 SUPPER where the incarnate Word for ever supplies the table of 
 Judaism, what would be this Word itself ? Nothing but a guest, 
 a divine one indeed, but one which thro' lack of entertainment 
 could not bring to our spiritual hearths those treasures of blessing 
 with which it is laden. One cannot, then, but perceive how 
 eminently favorable are Jewish doctrine, its incarnate Word and 
 Redemption to man's dignity which they raise, to his moral 
 energy which they arouse, to his interior transformation alone 
 reliable, because it is his own work to his true justification, the 
 fruit of a slow, inward labor, that leaves no dark corner of the 
 mind or conscience impenetrated by the divine light ! Is it thus 
 with Christianity ? Its Word, its Redemption, its action upon 
 the human soul, are, undeniably, all exterior, all objective ; they 
 operate outside of man, without his taking any part whatever, 
 except an act of faith in the virtue and efficacy of Jesus' sacrifice, 
 according to some, or at most (according to others) an act of 
 general faith in Jesus, his mission, commands, and promises. 
 The merits that justify, that procure pardon, are ever those of 
 another, namely, of Jesus. Never does man himself conquer 
 them by the sweat of his brow ; they are imputed to him. Ever 
 will remain this vast difference between Christianity and Juda- 
 ism, viz : that the Redemption of the latter is altogether interior ; 
 that its Passion, Condemnation, Death, Garden of Olives, Praetor 
 and Golgotha, are internal facts, the sphere of all being the mind 
 and heart of man, where the Word is ceaselessly sacrificed for 
 the benefit of humanity, upon the altar that man erects. 
 
 The foundations, then, as we see, upon which Christianity 
 rests, far from having that solidity which the beauty of the 
 structure seems to promise, are, on the contrary, fraught with 
 dangers, that a rigid logic could not fail to show* 
 
JEWISH AND-CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 29 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 HISTORICAL RESULTS. 
 
 SCAJTDALS n? THE CHURCH EMBARRASSMENT OF THE APOSTLES THE NlCOLATTM TH* 
 
 PKOPHZTESS OP THYATIRA THE SIMONIANS OTHER GNOSTIC SECTS SECTS OF THX 
 MIDDLE AGES PRINCIPLES or GNOSTIC IMMORALITY; INFEEF.NTLVL THEORY 
 JUDAISM KNOWS NOTHING SIMILAR SOLITARY EXCEPTION CONFIRMATORY OF OUB 
 SYSTEM PROTESTANTISM AND ITS ETHICAL SYSTEMS QUIETISM, 
 
 ."VVe have hitherto studied but the speculative side of Christian 
 ethics, its roots in dogma, and the influence that the latter can 
 and must exert upon morals. We have strictly confined ourselves 
 to the circle of ideas, avoiding all proof a posteriori, only that we 
 may proceed orderly in our exposition. In confining ourselves 
 to the region of abstractions, perhaps we may have appeared 
 desirous of avoiding realities that could falsify our conclusions, 
 and of giving ourselves free rein in endless reasoning, without ever 
 appealing to the test of experience. But this would be a great 
 mistake. Far from avoiding reality and experience, or rejecting 
 all proof a posteriori, we have deferred them only to give them 
 a larger and more suitable place. The principles already men- 
 tioned, the defects already discovered, the germs of weakness, 
 degeneracy and corruption, we are about to see in the external 
 world, exerting their influence, developing their inherent baneful 
 powers, and spreading their deadly branches and leaves over a 
 section of mankind. We are about to view hideous displays, to 
 see repulsive theories, distorted doctrines and unparalleled views, 
 shelter themselves under the principles of Christianity, and cover 
 its trunk with a rank vegetation, quickly lopped down, it is 
 true, by the authority of the Chuich, but which does not fail to 
 prove, on the one hand, that we were right in our perception of 
 this fatal germ in Christian doctrine, and to show, on the other, 
 the veritable historical evil it produced in the world. 
 
 We have indicated several causes of degeneracy in the Chris- 
 tian ethics : the abolition of the Law, the fiction of the death and 
 resurrection of the faithful with Jesus, the state of innocence to 
 which we are restored by the virtue of Jesus, the theory of the 
 Law begetting sin, and the externality of the redemption and 
 atonement. We are about to see these causes successively beget 
 some one of those monstrous doctrines that stain the history of 
 Christianity, and have no possible parallel in the history of the 
 Synagogue, just because they were unknown in Judaism. And 
 the very language of the sects themselves will show unequivocally 
 the logical connection of effect with cause, which we have assigned. 
 
30 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 No more precipitate blossoming can be imagined. As early 
 as the Apostolic times even, the seeds sown in Christian soil puts 
 forth its foul, dark-hued buds. Though it produced at that time 
 excessive vices, crimes and disorders, this, still, would not be so 
 bad, nor prove, withal, the truth of our deductions, if those vices 
 and excesses were not, thenceforth systematized and did not get 
 a scientific precision, a theory, a justification, I was about to say, 
 a formal consecration. What constitutes their importance and 
 what unfortunately makes us right on all points is, that those 
 vices did not hide themselves, were not ashamed, that they 
 boldly established themselves in the Church, that they shame- 
 lessly displayed their deformity in open day, and that they 
 deemed themselves justified by Christian dogma and ethics. 
 This is what cannot be disputed and what constitutes for us the 
 vital point of the question. We are hardly surprised, much less 
 scandalized, to hear from the mouth of the Apostle that there 
 were in the Church fornicators, idolaters, adulteresses, effem- 
 inate persons, sinners against nature, thieves, covetous people, 
 drunkards, extortioners;* that there were among the Christians 
 impurities unknown to the Gentiles; that a Christian cohabited 
 with his father's wife : all this, unhappily, is in so much accord 
 with human nature that Christianity cannot, without flagrant 
 injustice, be held responsible. But the motive, pretext and 
 occasion of this revolting picture are exclusively its own. Is it 
 not manifest from the words of the Apostle that Christian liberty 
 created those libertines and criminals ? Did they not entrench 
 themselves behind the abolition of the Law ? Did they not avail 
 themselves of Paul's allowing every enjoyment forbidden by 
 Judaism ? And see the Apostle surprised, disconcerted, fighting 
 painfully in this unexpected embarrassment created by himself ! 
 He defends and protects himself as well as he can ; he tries to 
 deaden the blow about to be given him with his own weapons : 
 11 All things," says he, "are lawful for me," here, then, are the 
 words with which this rabble wallowed in the mire of every sin 
 but all things ARE NOT EXPEDIENT : all things are lawful for 
 me repeating this infelicitous and immoral phrase to abate its 
 force " but Twill not be brought under the power of any. Meats 
 for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both 
 it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the 
 Lord, and the Lord for the body." f Vain efforts ! Impotent 
 dialectics ! Miserable subterfuges, too late opposed to the cry of 
 liberty raised against the Law the law that sanctioned and 
 protected its ceremonials, no less than its ethics ! Useless pro- 
 * Cor. v. 10, 11, and vi. 10. t Cor. vi. 12, 13. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 31 
 
 testation against the vices and passions that, chained up before 
 by the Law in the depths of the human heart, rise in their turn, 
 break their fetters-and shout liberty ! A glance suffices to detect 
 all that is false, embarrassing and illogical in this desperate 
 defence of Paul's. He dares not retract the false words, "All 
 things are lawful for me. 11 He has repeated them too often, and 
 they are too deeply sunk in the hearts of the faithful for any 
 human power to uproot : so he does not attempt it even ; he 
 can apply only palliatives. And what palliatives ! "All things 
 are lawful for me, but all things are not' expedient. What an 
 avowal ! what a degradation ! what a fall ! He dares not speak 
 of virtue, duty, morality in the abstract, to these deluded, brutal- 
 ized multitudes, he speaks to them of expediency; he does not 
 dispute that all is lawful, he denies only that all is convenient, 
 and that man, henceforth master of his actions, should make full 
 use of a boundless liberty. 
 
 If this expediency were, at least, dictated by reasonable 
 motives ! Paul tries to assign them. He imagines a plausible 
 distinction between the dietary laws and the moral. Meats are 
 for the stomach^ and the stomach for meatSj but God shall destroy 
 both. But the body in not for fornication, but for the Lord. Not 
 one, I dare say, of those great sinners who could not demolish, 
 with one stroke, Paul's reasoning, by telling him that if meats 
 are made for the stomach, pleasures are likewise for the body ; 
 that if God must destroy stomach and meats, so must He the 
 hand extended for theft, the arm for homicide, the senses clogged 
 from gluttony, drunkeness, and licentiousness ; that if the body 
 is made for the Lord, it is worth something probably the care of 
 God for instance ; that He is not indifferent to its concerns, and 
 that it is not true that whatever goes into the mouth does not 
 defile it, as do theft and adultery. Is it desirable to look further 
 still into the meaning of this expediency, that is, henceforth, to 
 constitute Paul's sole safety-plank from the general wreck ? Or 
 to see if we have calumniated the Apostle ? Speaking of meats 
 sacrificed to idols and eaten by many of the faithful, from 
 which Paul exhorts abstinence in order to avoid scandal, he uses 
 again his grand phrase, " All is lawful for me, but all is not ex- 
 pedient ; all things are allowed me, but all things do not edify" 
 (1 Cor. x., 23). This additional light upon the value of the term, 
 expediency, shows how exactly correct is -our explanation. It is 
 not as yet a heresy that has a name, a standard, a history, 
 though it is truly the germ of a heresy. The first historical one 
 that truly bears this name, the oldest example of human reason 
 left to itself in the heart-centre of Christianity, is a grand out- 
 
32 JEWISH AND CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 burst against morality. No older sect is known than the Nicola- 
 ites of whom the Apocalypse speaks (ii., 15) as a heresy whose 
 doctrines were already notorious and wide spread. No obscure 
 person was this Nicolas, the founder of a sect, one of the seven 
 deacons of the Church. A spectacle not a little instructive is that 
 of the Nicolaites, who, at the cradle almost of Christianity, made 
 every sort of licentiousness and immorality their rule of life ,' 
 who, the better to escape the slavery of the senses, and not waste 
 the freedom of the soul in constant tiresome struggles, desired to 
 exhaust the flesh by complying with all its desires. Is not this 
 Paul's principle, pushed to the furthest limits? Is not this the 
 natural fruit of a contempt and degradation of the flesh ? 
 
 Without leaving the evangelical era and sphere, we meet, 
 furthermore, prophetesses who rivaled in immorality the deacon 
 Nicolas. That old Jew, that noble and pure spirit John, the well- 
 beloved disciple of Jesus, is stirred with a holy zeal against the 
 town that welcomed him and against the bishop who allowed the 
 predictions of the prophetess : "Angel of the Church at Thyatira, 
 writes he, . . . . I have something against thee ; it is that 
 thou sufferest that Jezabel, who calls herself a prophetess, to 
 teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat 
 things sacrificed to idols." Here appears the same licentiousness 
 against which Paul contended. 
 
 Do we need to review here the long list of Gnostic sects ? 
 The oldest is that of the Simonians, the direct brood of Simon, 
 called the magician, a contemporary of the Apostles, who did not 
 affirm that good works were needless for salvation. After him 
 came a crowd of imitators. Without Tnentioning the Nicolaites 
 to whom we have alluded, there were the Valentinians who 
 denied the necessity of good works, and deemed their salvation 
 sure by being only spiritual or pneumatic. There were the 
 Basilideans, the Cainites, and the Carpocratians who pushed 
 their spirituality still further, by making the most flagrant vio- 
 lation of all morality and incumbent duty : the Actians or 
 Eunomians, who likewise denied the necessity of good works. 
 In the fourth century came the Messalians, who gave the faithful 
 a dispensation from every virtue, provided they prayed in- 
 cessantly, and who, having become as they thought incapable of 
 sin, abandoned themselves without scruple to all kinds of licen- 
 tiousness. Prior to these, in the second century, were the 
 Adamites, who pretended that they had been restored by Jesus 
 to the original innocence of Adam, and who consequently went 
 naked, rejected marriage, and deemed the community of women 
 a privilege of this return to primitive innocence. Then in the 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 33 
 
 middle ages was a swarm of monstrous sects. The one last men- 
 tioned begot in the twelfth century the sect of Teudemus, who 
 declared fornication and adultery holy and meritorious ; in the 
 fourteenth, the Turlupins who maintained that when man had 
 arrived at a certain point of perfection, he was freed from all law, 
 and that the liberty of the sage consisted, not in ruling his 
 passions, but on the contrary, in shaking off the yoke of the 
 divine laws. We need not relate what abominable practices 
 followed such theories. Finally, at the commencement of the 
 fifteenth century the Picards or Begghaws renewed all the errors 
 of the old Adamites. The middle ages produced also the Brothers 
 of the Free Soul, who maintained the unimportance of external 
 works. 
 
 We cannot leave the middle ages without making two re- 
 marks which the intelligent reader will appreciate. One has 
 particular reference to the Gnostics. We see in their systemized 
 depravity, a confirmation, from point to point, of our assertion 
 that this sort of error and licentiousness originates in the con- 
 tempt of the body preached by Christianity. We said before that 
 this could be exhibited in two ways ; either by mortifying one's 
 body by subjecting it to the most severe privations, or in refusing 
 it everything, even rule itself. We have also said that this fiction, 
 the dream of the new-birth era, of a perfection unexampled in 
 this life, was calculated to craze people on the subject of morals, 
 and to authorize acts, criminal, doubtless, under existing physical 
 and moral conditions, but not so under the imaginary ones of that 
 unreal kingdom to which they believed themselves admitted. 
 
 Is it not this that we see among the Gnostics ? Are not these 
 the exact causes we see in play ? Was it not this contempt of the 
 body that produced among them the two at once opposite effects 
 in the one case, a rule of life excessively rigid, unheard of morti- 
 fications; in the other, a boundless disorder and unparalleled 
 enormities ? 
 
 The other remark is no less important, and we have had else- 
 where occasion to make a similar one, respecting the protestations 
 renewed from age to age in Christendom, against the distinction 
 of persons in the Deity. 
 
 We should say then : Since Monotheism, in spite of the 
 double influence of ancient Paganism (eminently polytheistic), 
 in spite of the influence of authorative Christianity, in spite of 
 the tendency and general character of the age, yet penetrated 
 through all obstacles, its germ must indeed have originally lain 
 in Christianity, though stifled afterwards by those parasitical 
 Gnostics that usurped its place and hindered its expansion. Wo 
 
34 JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 make the same assertion of the present time, and doubtless with 
 more reason still. If, in spite of the moral instincts of all rational 
 creatures, and of their innate notions of right and wrong; in spite 
 of Pagan morals which, though corrupt indeed as well, yet never 
 dared raise that corruption to the dignity of a principle, or 
 systematize and consecrate immorality; if in spite of the example, 
 the authority, and the condemnations of official Christianity 
 these errors made way; if there is no period in the history of the 
 Church when the eye is not saddened by some revolting spectacle, 
 by some monstrous theory; if these sects, in the fifteenth century 
 even, made full display of their hideous nudity ; and lastly, if 
 Judaism, in the numerous phases of its history immovably 
 secular, never astonished the world by similar spectacles, we 
 must indeed say that Christianity contained some latent force, 
 some powerful germ, that strove irresistibly to grow, to expand, 
 and to bear plenteous fruit. And what is this germ, if not the 
 very causes we have named ? 
 
 We have just said that Judaism is free from such stains. We 
 hasten to add that there is a single exception, which also goes 
 to prove, not only the nature of the errors that produced such 
 effects, but even the Cabalistic origin of Christianity, an origin 
 that through the corruption of doctrine, contributed powerfully 
 to the birth and growth of this abominable morality. This 
 exception is another pretended Messiah, another Cabalist. His 
 name was Schabbatai Zevi. Instructive sight ! With him the 
 same sequence, the same connection of doctrines ends in the same 
 abominations. He, too, is the incarnate righteousness of God ; 
 he, too, is the God-Messiah, the introducer of a new era, who 
 opens, in his own person, the Messianic age, the world to come. 
 He, too, distinguishes the Spiritual from the Psychics and the 
 Hylics, because the Zohar seemed to authorize it; only he does 
 not interpret this spirituality according to the Zohar, but truly 
 after Paul's fashion ; he, too, lives in this world of spirituality 
 and perfect liberty which is the JSina, the superior mother, the 
 world to come, where evil is not perceptible even, where no dis- 
 tinction separates the pure from the impure, good from evil, 
 because there all is good, pure and beautiful ; he, too, living in 
 this fantastic world, thinks all is lawful for him, and Messiah, 
 Saint, God though he styles himself, he astonishes the world by 
 his unspeakable impurities, his open licentiousness, shameless, 
 I was about to say religious, since it was in the name of religion, 
 duty and virtue that he transgressed. Is it not, as we have else- 
 where said, a history in miniature (better known as it is nearer 
 us) of the birth and vicissitudes of Christianity ? 
 
AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 35 
 
 Another consideration already touched on, throws still more 
 light on the importance of these examples. It is that whenever 
 Christianity thought found itself uncontrolled, whenever this 
 great tree, instead of vegetating in official enclosures, under the 
 artificial heat its guardians meted out to it, could freely expand 
 to the free air and sunlight, it failed not to produce, close to its 
 finest shoots, most agreeable fruits, and healthiest shades, a 
 branch, a fruit, a shade of death, as say the Scriptures : as witness 
 two great epochs of Christian history. The first, its virgin 
 liberty, unbroken as yet to ecclesiastical authority, namely 
 Gnosticism, of which we have spoken; the other, its reconquered 
 liberty, the yoke of the exterior Church for the first time shaken 
 off, namely Protestantism, about which we shall say a few words. 
 Will Protestantism confirm our predictions ? What will this re- 
 assertion of the right of free inquiry, this return to strict reason, 
 this appeal to good sense, logic, and the free interpretation of 
 Scripture produce ? Beyond doubt, if the same phenomenon 
 show itself, if the same immorality come to crown efforts so 
 great, aspirations so noble, and independence so proud ; if this is 
 the final result of all free investigation, we must say that the 
 germs arid causes I have pointed out, lie absolutely at the root 
 of Christianity. And remember that Protestantism, sounding 
 the reveille for our paralyzed or dormant faculties, naturally 
 allies itself with all the noble and generous instincts of the heart; 
 it makes its appearance in history at a time comparatively 
 advanced, when morals began to throw off that gross mould, 
 acquired during the middle ages, and when classic studies aided 
 the parallel development of our better faculties. What better 
 omens could be desired of the advent of a pure and high morality? 
 And yet, what a harrowing picture does the religion of a free 
 enquiry present ! .Far from reproaching Protestantism, we say 
 that it has completely fulfilled its mission, that it has unhesitat- 
 ingly and courageously laid bare the defects in Christian ethics 
 and the evil it may produce when the sacredotal eye no longer 
 keeps watch over the threatening hydra. But, however, our 
 assertions are only better proved, and the history of Protestant 
 doctrine is our strongest support. 
 
 Facts speak for themselves. We shall but mention John 
 Huss, who obeying his personal inspiration alone, teaches the 
 same doctrine. But Luther comes ; he frees himself from the 
 ruling church, and does not recoil from the most audacious revolt. 
 What will he-decide as to ethics. What will be his judgment on 
 good works ? One, I dare say, that will cause a shudder. He 
 pronounces them mortal sins. Reason, the heart, good morals, 
 
36 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 oppose this doctrine through Melancthon. Vain resistance ! In 
 1567 the Diet of Worms condemns him and approves of Luther's 
 ethics. Can we expect anything better of Calvin ? He has, 
 nevertheless, no connexion with any one, neither with Luther, 
 nor the church. What will he teach regarding Christian ethics ? 
 "We believe," say the Calvanists in chorus, "that by faith alone 
 we share the righteousness of Jesus Christ ; GOD HAS NO HEGARD 
 FOR GOOD WORKS. Protestantism passes from hand to hand, 
 changes its schools, its masters, its country, its church its 
 morality is always the same. The Anglicans, who are the most 
 moderate, announce in 1562 : That good works, the products of 
 faith even, cannot expiate our sins and satisfy the strict justice of 
 
 God As to those done without the grace of Jesus, they 
 
 are but mortal sins. 11 
 
 Years glide away, and we pass to another form of Protestant- 
 ism, to another country: and the ethics ? Moral works, says the 
 Calvanistic synod of 1618, do not count for our justification. We 
 are almost on the threshold of modern times, and the Christian 
 ethics, with free speech, free teaching, has not budged a step. 
 
 Let us, however, imitate the sick man who shifts his position 
 to ease his pain: let us pass to another church, let us ask from 
 another period information about the Catholic morality. Re- 
 markable fact! While the priesthood, ever on the alert, half 
 religious, half secular, watches over Catholic morality lest it 
 should stray to paths, where society might be lost with it, the 
 breath of liberty, the spirit of philosophy, logic and its claims, 
 penetrate through those gratings, those iron walls that a compact 
 hierarchy oppose to their entrance ; and one fine day, in this 
 enclosure so guarded, ruled and watched, a strange exotic plant 
 shoots forth, the germs of which doubtless lay in the lowest 
 strata of the soil, but which a more penetrating sun-ray, a breath 
 of spring quite fresh, has caused to blossom, to the astonishment 
 of the guardians. We need hardly say we allude to Quietism. 
 Molinos who has given it for ever his name, bold as he was, is 
 not isolated in the history of Catholicism. He belongs to the 
 school that claims Origen as father, and that survived in Evager, 
 deacon of Constantinople, in the Hesychastes of the 14th century, 
 in the Begghards (who carried doctrinal consequences further), 
 and to a greater or less degree in most of the Mystics, the 
 most celebrated of whom, in this respect, was the archbishop of 
 Cambray. Now the most characteristic doctrine of Quietism, 
 that upon which, far or near, were based all the forementioned 
 schools, and which awoke the alarm of the church was : That, in 
 the contemplative state, the use of sacraments and the practice of 
 
JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS- 37 
 
 good works, are unimportant matters, and that the most criminal 
 pictures and impressions that are formed on the sensitive part of 
 the soul are not sins. Fenelon himself, archbishop and moder- 
 atist as he was, this candid, noble soul and loyal Catholic, did not 
 deem that he was erring from the truth by teaching that the soul 
 may, without guilt, push its disinterestedness to the point that it 
 is no longer solicitous about its salvation or damnation; and the 
 Society of the Holy-Office had need of thirty-seven conferences to 
 censure Fenelon. f 
 
 Thus every blow aimed by Christianity against ancient Jewish 
 orthodoxy recoiled against the most sacred interests of morality 
 and shook its most natural supports. 
 
 Christianity, placing its kingdom out of this world, not taking 
 in political society, condemning the secularly of the Mosaic 
 system, was forced from the nature of things/ to mount itself the 
 empty throne, to choose servitude or dominion, to put the 
 spiritual in the place of the temporal, and, with the same stroke, 
 to establish religious intolerance. By the abolition of the law, it 
 sapped the foundations of morality ; it prepared and authorized, 
 unwittingly no doubt, licentiousness of morals. By its fictions 
 about death and resurrection, forced suppositions for a reality 
 negatived by fact, it sanctioned the huge humbug of giving to the 
 living the liberty of the dead, to existing humanity ttye laws that 
 shall rule it when it leaves the tomb. By the Redemption, it 
 exerted a triple influence upon the fate of morality: by the restor- 
 ation of man to Adam's primitive state, it consecrated a retro- 
 spective fiction, just as by the fiction of the resurrection it 
 forestalled the rights of the most distant future an illusion as 
 great in the one case as in the other ! By its very idea of sin, it 
 overturned the most natural notions of right and wrong, teaching 
 that it is through the Law alone we are made acquainted with 
 sin. By the very act of redemption it detached man from the 
 work of salvation, by throwing upon the God-Messiah all the 
 weight of expiation, and transferring the sphere of his regener- 
 ation from within to without. In a word, the pernicious fruits of 
 these speculative errors were not slow to appear what do I say 
 did not cease to manifest themselves from age to age in number- 
 less and learned heresies, strange apparitions doubtless, often 
 frightful and detestable, but which the logical sequence of ideas 
 brought from time to time upon the stage of history, the subjects 
 at once of terror, indignation and mournful thought, -for genera- 
 tions to come. 
 
38 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 ITS TITLES AND ITS PRETENTIONS. WHY HEBREW ETHICS HAS NOT BEEN DTTLT 
 APPRECIATED. DIVISION OF ETHICS. DIGNITY OF MAN, HIS FALL, HIS REGENERATION. 
 FREE JUDGMENT AND GRACE. LIFE. GENERAL MATTMS. PHARISAICAL PLAN. 
 EXAMPLES. TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 
 
 We judged that we could not proceed in our essay on Christian 
 ethics better than by commencing with an examination of the 
 theoretic foundations upon which this rests. Have we erred in 
 our choice of method ? Or have we, by chance, gone astray in 
 our estimations? The reader must say. 
 
 However that be, another work, a new task awaits us. What- 
 ever be the foundation of Christian ethics, whatever may be 
 decided against their solidity, still a grand and imposing struc- 
 ture has been raised upon them. A thousand generations have 
 been sheltered beneath its hospitable roof; a thousand sufferings 
 and griefs have found there an almost divine alleviation; a thou- 
 sand virtues have spread from it through the world, everywhere 
 inspiring courage for the good, fear for the evil ; a thousand 
 intellects have bent in reverence before it ; let us too bend before 
 this masterpiece of half a dozen Jews, before this branch of the 
 great Hebrew tree, grafted on the trunk of the Gentiles. We 
 recognize there the footprints of Judaism, the spirit of the 
 patriarchs, prophets and doctors; and are tempted to say with 
 old Isaac: " Truly the hands are Esau's, but the voice is indeed 
 Jacobs'." 
 
 Deplorable effect of an ever widening breach ! It happened, 
 however that, after many ages, Christianity and Judaism tired, 
 the one of smiting, the other of suffering, met one day, and re- 
 cognized each other, saluting with the address of father and son. 
 But. O shame ! the son did not bow before the white hair of his 
 father, the father neither embraced nor blessed his son, the Joseph, 
 whom, torn so young from the paternal hearth, he found in Egypt, 
 great, rich, proud of his power. Whose the fault ? History will 
 say, when the father and son, reconciled, shall embrace. 
 
 Meantime, if there be anything which retards the advent of 
 that great day, it is the superiority the son arrogates over his old 
 father, Christianity over the religion of Israel as regarding 
 morality. If there be any outrage which a father cannot endure 
 without degradation, it is assuredly this. To truth, criticism 
 and opinion, we leave the task of examining this pretension, and 
 of terminating a demeanor that has prevailed for ages. Many a 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 39 
 
 time, alas ! Judaism has had to bear the stigma of this insult, 
 and many a time has it realized the terrible prediction of Isaiah, 
 that persecution would add slander to a secular martyrdom. 
 Shall a day of justice, of impartiality, of right criticism ever 
 come ? Let us hope so. Already learned pens have wrought at 
 the great work ; already is opinion moved, shaken, and open 
 criticism speaks of certain Jewish maxims (as the well known 
 reply of Hillel to the proselyte) that preceded and inspired the 
 founder of Christianity. Why it has not yet won a just and law- 
 ful victory, and why a full success has not crowned such efforts, 
 we shall frankly tell. It is from two causes equally deplorable. 
 The one, that a sufficient line of demarcation has not been drawn 
 between Jewish civil polity and its ethics proper, an indispens- 
 able distinction, absolutely required, from the two fold nature 
 of Judaism, as we have shown. The other, that too little im- 
 portance has been attached to tradition, though I grant that the 
 harangues of a hostile camp, or an affectation of Jewish Puritan- 
 ism, not at all in accord with the traditional, rabbinical Judaism 
 we profess, has given it sufficient. We shall do our best to avoid 
 these two rocks; happy if we advance even one step this religious 
 question, which, though not debated in the civil courts or journals, 
 beats deeply, nevertheless, in the heart and brain of man. 
 
 We shall divide our work into several parts. Our starting 
 point shall be man, the ideas that each side entertains respecting 
 him, its ideas, also, of the world and life, and the general 
 maxims that both have laid down, respecting morals. The 
 duties that regard ourselves, humility, innocence, truth, self- 
 denial, voluntary poverty; the duties that we owe to others, and 
 above all, charity, that great word, which Christianity pro- 
 nounced for the first time to an ignorant world ; the forgiveness 
 of injuries ; love towards one's enemies ; our ideas about sinners, 
 the anxiety they cause; forbearance; the duties, in fine, that 
 connect us with God: the aim of our actions, the glory of God, 
 faith, trust in God, love of God and perseverance, such are the 
 grand subjects that shall occupy us a little while, too sure that 
 we cannot exhaust the least of them. But it will suffice, if we 
 throw on each such light as may guide some one-of greater power 
 and inspiration to a complete performance. 
 
 In speaking of man, we shall here take occasion to state once 
 more that to Judaism, unquestionably, belongs the glory of 
 having first announced to men that they are children of the same 
 father; of having, in a word, proclaimed a UNIVERSAL, BROTHER- 
 HOOD. We believe that this glory will not be dimmed, if it 
 takes precedence of that charity, whose brightest jewel and 
 
40 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 firmest stay it is. Nor shall we speak of the soul and its powers, 
 and scarcely shall we touch, in passing, on free judgment and 
 original sin. We do not discourse on the whole nature of man, 
 but only on what has direct reference to practical morality. 
 
 Now, man's dignity possesses for man a most powerful attrac- 
 tion. Doubtless the Gospels have some traits that exalt to his 
 view human nature, although other views and particularly 
 ulterior theological speculations have placed him far beneath 
 those calm hights to which Judaism had raised him. If we read 
 in Luke that the kingdom of God is within us, if there is 
 nothing more frequent than to hear the faithful called "members 
 of Christ," if they will have it that " Christ dwells in us," if the 
 believer ranks with the angels and even above them, this, when 
 well understood, is only the lost echo of ancient Jewish doctrines, 
 that were yet alive in the days of Jesus. Judaism, as we know, 
 declares man made after the image of God ; he is the king and 
 master of creation, he is the vicar and providence of God upon 
 earth I had almost said he was its God, as, according to the 
 Rabbis, God said to Jacob, "I am God above, thou art god 
 below." He is, according to the Midrasch, the love-knot uniting 
 heaven and earth, for he has the spiritual nature of the one, and 
 the corporeal nature of the other; by this precious combination 
 he makes peace between the spirit and the body, between heaven 
 and earth ever at variance. And if we question the Cabalists 
 about this, they tell us that man's influence, his thoughts, 
 sentiments and actions have an echo and vibrate sensitively, 
 like the rings of some subtle, delicate chain, in the farthest 
 spheres of the universe. But what is this in-dwelling Kingdom 
 of God if not the present Pharisaism? Moses said : " Build me 
 a tabernacle that I may dwell in the midst of them." The 
 Rabbis go much farther : by a slight and felicitous modifica- 
 tion, of which the Mosaic words are quite susceptible, they 
 change this wooden tabernacle, where God is about to dwell, to 
 the soul, heart, and spirit of man, a house a thousand times 
 more worthy of Deity and they make this great assertion, that 
 God dwells in Israel, within him. This, however, is only the 
 simple germ which we must see in its rich and powerful bloom 
 from the hands of the Cabalists. ^his miserable body of man 
 is nothing less than an august temple, whose parts are his 
 members ; and taking with one hand the plan of the Temple of 
 Jerusalem, with the other, the descriptive anatomy of the human 
 body, they trace, step by step, the parallel development of each, 
 assigning to each member a function corresponding to some part 
 of the Temple, and they end at last with this sublime statement, 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 41 
 
 that the heart is the Holy of Holies, or the special and usual seat 
 of the Glory (SCHECHIXA), which is nothing else than the king- 
 dom of God, as we have frequently affirmed, and as the passage 
 from Luke plainly shows. Much more ; the just man is the car 
 the true car, that God guides, and the soul of the just is at once 
 the car md the throne of his holiness. 
 
 We are all of us members of the Schechina. of the King- 
 dom (as the faithful are members of Jesus, the incarnate Word) ; 
 and this is why all suffering and pain react on the heart of this 
 tender mother, who fails not to moan at each blood drop or tear 
 of even the impious, and to show herself wounded by the same 
 stroke that has smitten a member-child.* After this shall we be 
 surprised to hear the doctors and cabalists say that human souls 
 are superior to angels, as the protected is superior to the protector ; 
 that they were the counselors of God at the time of the creation ; 
 that the just are God's coadjutants in forming the heavens and 
 the earth ; that they too have the title creators ; that they are the 
 support and foundation of the universe; that the angels will one 
 day ask the just to disclose the mysteries of the eternal which 
 Paul expresses in his fashion by saying : " Know ye not, that we 
 shall judge the angels ;" f and which Peter also teaches, saying 
 that the angels desire to look into the Gospel prediction (1 Gen, 
 Ep. i. 12) that they rise to such a degree of holiness that the 
 angels shall proclaim them thrice holy, as they do the Creator ; 
 and that, at last, God will deign to allow them His incom- 
 municable name. Here, indeed, is an ideal, beyond imagination 
 noble, attractive and sublime. Add, that all can attain this end; 
 that each one may aspire to equal Moses or Aaron, AND THAT HE 
 OUGHT and we can see what grand perspectives Judaism opens 
 for the observant believer, and what superior ardor must animate 
 the most apathetic soul, in the presence of a future so glorious, of 
 possibilities so strange. 
 
 Nevertheless, man* is fallen; this Judaism as well as Chris- 
 tianity teaches, with this difference always, that, in the 
 Genesaic history of the Fall, the former gives us glimpses of 
 a philosophy, far different in sense from the childish story of 
 the apple and the serpent, while Christianity, on the contrary, 
 ever regards sin, true sin, as the result of the unlucky fruit 
 presented to Adam, and the Church shut the mouth of Origen, 
 who tried to lift himself a litt^ beyond the literal sense. In 
 Judaism, every school of any importance, from the Cabalists 
 downward, sees in the narrative of Genesis something above and 
 beyond the-drama of Paradise. Still, with All man is fallen ; and 
 
 * Sanhederin^e. t 1 Cor. vi. 3. 
 
42 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 how shall he rise? By the incarnate word, replies Christianity; 
 by the incarnate Word, likewise replies Judaism and especially 
 Cabalistic Judaism. But what is this incarnate Word? Here it 
 is, that the diverse genius of each religion shows itself to every 
 eye. 
 
 The Word, says Christianity, the eternal Logos, becomes 
 flesh; is born, lives, speaks, teaches, sacrifices himself as a sin- 
 expiation ; and all mankind suffer, die, rise with him, and 
 through him recover their primitive purity. Incarnation, sacri- 
 fice, virtue, merit, atonement, all quite exterior things, are applied 
 to mankind by a single word, and that is IMPUTATION. Is it the 
 same in Cabalistic Judaism ? There, the AVord, Logos, Tipheret, 
 besides its eternal incarnation as substance in nature, incarnates 
 itself also as thought in the Law; law, which under a thousand 
 phases and a thousand applications, governs the universe, from 
 the angel before God or the star that rolls in infinite space, to the 
 worm that creeps on the earth, to man who is included also in 
 the universal harmony, and for whom this thousand-faced, thou- 
 sand-sided law circumscribes itself, adapts itself to the plan he 
 occupies in creation, and becomes the law of Moses. This is the 
 Word, the incarnate Law this is the perpetual Eucharist upon 
 which the holy feed, and this the redemption that has for its 
 sphere the heart and mind of man the Law, the Sinai, at the 
 foot of which the Israelites were cleansed from the old stain of 
 our first parents. We need not dwell upon the pernicious effects 
 of a redemption quite external, offered us by Christianity; we 
 have seen them but too well in all those fore-mentioned schools 
 or heresies, that justified their apathy or licentiousness by the 
 stupefaction of the moral faculties inevitably produced by the 
 Christian theory of redemption. How, if we enter for a moment 
 the sanctuary of conscience, and ask Christianity what use it has 
 made of free judgment, the most precious, unquestionably, of 
 God's gifts ? Far are we from wishing, to involve ourselves in 
 that dark labyrinth where- graces of every sort are so lavished, 
 that human liberty is at last stifled beneath the weight of so many 
 benefits. If any fact come clearly forth from that grand discussion, 
 dating from the birth of Christianity and continued almost to our 
 day, it is, that with the Catholics (who, after all, grant the largest 
 field to human liberty), man is led to good, to virtue, only 
 through an inciting influence from on high. This is the decision 
 of the Council of Orange in 529, against the semi-Pelagiens. 
 What does Judaism teach about grace, and free Judgment? 
 Doubtless it, too, recognizes the action of God upon man's 
 liberty, it believes in a co-operation through which we are aided 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 to rise towards Him. Doubtless it, too, offers a continual prayer 
 for this grace, this invaluable help. But, let us haste to add, 
 that the only doctrine at the roots of Christianity that is a true 
 reflection of old Jewish orthodoxy is that one qualified by semi- 
 Pelagianism. If nothing perfect can be accomplished by man 
 without the aid of the Eternal; if He alone imparts courage, 
 light, and perseverance to man's heart, the first step withal, the 
 initiative of every good work, the first aspiration towards good- 
 ness, truth and ineffable beauty must spring from the heart itself 
 of man. He, himself, as say the doctors, must open to them the 
 door, were this but as small as a needle's point, in order that 
 God may throw open for him another as wide as the Temple's ; * 
 and to sum all with a Cabalistic saying: "The arousalis, first, 
 from below, then from above. 11 
 
 Is not this to augment at once the responsibility and the 
 grandeur of man ? to make him, instead of a passive instrument 
 in God's hands, a force to which He has assigned its own sphere of 
 action ? to condemn, in the same sentence, idleness, dissipation 
 and neglect of duty ? and to give an increased impulse to man, 
 who needs but a simple noble beginning to see himself instantly 
 penetrated with light, courage and invincible strength priceless 
 gifts from on high, Man, about whom are such conflicting ideas, 
 is cast on this earth, the theatre of his acts, under the mysterious 
 conditions we call life. What idea does Christianity give us of 
 life? It would be easy to appeal here to those great geniuses, 
 ancient and modern, who have seen in Christianity, hate of the 
 world, condemnation of life, contempt of all its charms and most 
 precious gifts. Our task would be too easy, and we might seem 
 to take refuge under imposing names. Doubtless a testimony 
 almost unanimous would be no small presumption in favor of 
 what we have said, and are about to say; but it is from the 
 Gospels that we wish to ask the theory of life, the ideas we ought 
 to entertain of the world, of its values, its conditions and its 
 relations to life eternal. Now, if there be any thing proveable in 
 the Gospels it is that the term world, invariably figures there as 
 the synonym of vice, evil and sin. Could it be otherwise with a 
 religion that terms itself exiled here below, and that cries: My 
 kingdom is not of this world \ 
 
 Indeed, it would be an endless task to examine and cite all 
 the passages where the world is made the antithesis of virtue ; 
 and the transformation this word has undergone to stand 
 as the symbol of evil, instead of the Hebrew synonym of 
 eternity (clam) Is not the least injury Jewish thought has 
 * Midrasch. 
 
4 JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHIC& 
 
 suffered at the hand of Christianity. We shall say only that 
 what happened to the Law, has happened to the world. We have 
 seen that the Law was identified with sin, and the world also is 
 to be identified with it, with evil. Some decisive quotations will 
 suffice to confirm the assertions of the most impartial criticisms. 
 Jesus told his disciples that they were not of the world, even as 
 he was not of the world;* and what proves that no interpretation 
 but the most absolute and literal is admissible, is that the 
 PRINCE OF THIS WORKD is always represented as the adversary 
 of Jesus and his Church. And truly, it is impossible to say that 
 the word world refers merely to the generation of that time, or 
 yet again to what is evil and vicious here below. For the genius 
 of evil would never have been personified by '* the Prince of this 
 world," if the world itself had not appeared to Jesus and his 
 followers worthy only of the rule of a demon. See John xii. 31, 
 where the Prince of this world is about to be "cast out," and 
 chapter xiv. 30, where the Prince of this world advances against 
 Jesus to destroy him and the justness of our assertion, and of 
 the opinion of Marcion (heretic though he was), will be seen, 
 namely, that the God of the ancient law, though truly the God 
 of Nature as well, is yet very different from the Deity of the 
 Gospels. 
 
 With Judaism it is altogether different. We do not say the 
 Judaism of the Bible ; for, so far from falling into the extrava- 
 gance of the Gospels, it seems to lean rather to the other side, 
 in so favorable a light are presented the actual world, life, its 
 worth, and conditions ; and the inferential denial that it has 
 any spirituality, any regard for another life, is the proof of this, 
 So we shall imitate Mr. Salvador, who, following the Bible only, 
 sees in Judaism nothing but matter and material advantages, 
 in other words, a complete antithesis to the Christian conception. 
 No ! true Judaism lies not here, but in tradition and its instru- 
 ments, that, while accepting the heritage of the Bible, dominate 
 it, from the full hight and superiority of eternal life, upon this 
 ephemeral orb. Now, how speaks tradition regarding the world ? 
 It is not a prison, a hell, a purgatory, a place of banishment, as 
 the religious or philosophic alternately teach. It is simply a 
 vestibule. No longer the highroad, but not as yet the house; it 
 is a place of initiation, of apprenticeship to a future life, where 
 the guests prepare to enter the triclinium, or dining-hall palace. | 
 It is the to-day, as-eternity is the to-morrow ; the time for labor, 
 for action, for good works, for worship and piety, as eternity is 
 the time for retribution ;J it is the eve of the Sabbath, on which 
 
 * John, xvii. I Aboth, chap. iv. t TaL, treatise Eroubin, chap-ii. 
 
'JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 45 
 
 the repast is prepared for the Lord's Day;*' it is the season of 
 duty and submission, as the morrow shall be that of freedom, 
 from every law.f Precious time! " wherein a single hour of 
 virtue and repentance is worth more than an entire eternity," 
 for the latter gives only in the degree that it receives ;J and 
 not without reason did Solomon pronounce the dead lion less 
 happy than the living dog. (j 
 
 One fact gives the whole difference between the two doctrines, 
 namely, that while the Prince of this world is, for Christianity, 
 the genius of evil, this title is given by the Cabalists to their 
 kingdom, the Jfalchout, also styled the Prince of this world. A 
 fact doubly significant ! for while, on the one hand, it confirms 
 our judgment on the present question, it makes us almost see the 
 moral consequences of that omission in dogma of which we have 
 spoken, I mean the obliteration and absorption of the Malchout 
 (the present world), into the heart of the Bina (the world to 
 come). In the place so made void, Christianity has enthroned a 
 demon the Prince of this world. 
 
 We shall but point out what renders Christianity incapable of 
 governing the present life, condemning, spurning and vilifying 
 as it does all its most precious gifts. Life itself is an incum- 
 brance, a weight, of which we should desire to be quickly rid 
 (Paul) ; the flesh, is "a flesh of sin," that can be reinstated only 
 by death and resurrection. Could it find a place for the dearest 
 and holiest affections ? The rich and riches, the great, and all 
 human grandeur, science, joy, get not a word indicative of the 
 good use to which man may convert them here below. I know 
 well that the Church tries hard to see, in the anathematizing of 
 this use, a condemnation of abuses only. In vain ! for not only 
 does John exhort us not to love the world or the things it con- 
 tains, he who loves it is not loved of God : in the world all is 
 concupiscence of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life, 
 but Jesus himself cries to us,1f " Woe to ye, rich men !" On 
 account of their vices ? No ; " because ye have -already had your 
 consolation." "Woe to ye that are filled!" And why? Be- 
 cause a reverse of fortune awaits them ? No ; " because ye shall 
 hunger: 11 "Woe to ye that laugh now, for ye shall lament and 
 weep." Could there be a place for love ? Doubtless charity is 
 recommended; but those special and no less sacred ties, that 
 adorn and sanctify life will be lost, I dare say, effaced and dis- 
 solved in universal charity, in the Church. 
 
 * Talmud, Aboda Zara, chap. i. \ Talmud, Schabbat, I, e. 
 
 t Talmud, Schbabat, chap. ii. $ John, chap. i. 
 
 t Abbth, loc. otf. f Luc., chap. vi. f , . X 
 
46 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 And first, could anything good, lawful or-sacred exist in this 
 world, this life, this sinful flesh, without being infected by 
 nature and sharing their condemnation ? 
 
 Could it be the family? But, he who will not leave father, 
 mother, brothers, sisters, to follow the new doctrine shall not have 
 done his tvhole duty; nor can the performance of even the last 
 office for a parent make the disciple of Jesus relent a mite, for it 
 is the dead who must bury their dead. Jesus himself, when told 
 that his mother, brothers and sisters were waiting for him at the 
 door: "These," said he, turning to his disciples, "are my 
 mother, brothers and sisters;" and so well did he thenceforth 
 identify himself with the era of the resurrection which, to his 
 view, was also that of the Messiah, that he dares to say to his 
 mother : " Woman, what have I to do with thee ?" Is this the 
 spectacle that Judaism presents ? With it the family is not only 
 the central point from whose expansion must come the state, 
 but the domestic hearth is the first temple, the first altar for 
 worship, and the model it gives us for imitation, is the patriarch 
 surrounded by his family, adoring and sacrificing to the Most 
 High. 
 
 Could it be marriage ? We shall not repeat the assertion that 
 the Gospel condemns it ; but it is indisputable that neither 
 Jesus nor his apostles encourage or bless it, and the most that we 
 can infer from the words of Paul is but the simple toleration of 
 an evil with which he could not wholly do away. 
 
 Thus life, health, riches, science, honor, glory, love, family, 
 country, all that make existence great, holy and happy, these 
 reflections of heaven below, the reminiscences of paradise, these 
 foretastes of eternity, all vilified, spurned and sacrificed to that 
 prospective life, to that kingdom not of this world, all swept 
 away by the same torrent that bore off into the region of dogma 
 whatever gave value and position, in the divine economy, to the 
 things of time the kingdom, the Malchout, which is of this 
 world indeed, nay is the world itself (Olam haze) with which 
 Jesus, by an unmistakable allusion, contrasts another kingdom 
 not of this world. 
 
 W T hatever be the value of life, of this world, of the existing 
 society, in them man lives, and consequently should have some 
 rule of conduct with respect to them ; this rule is Morality. Let 
 us haste to recognize it. The more Christianity subtracts from 
 the private affections, and the more miserly it is at its roots, so 
 much the richer and more lavish is it towards those general 
 affections which the increase and concentration of the human 
 race call forth, and it gives to the Church, to humanity, all that 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 47 
 
 it takes from mem, family and country. Must we not expect 
 this? Is it not most natural that a religion announcing itself a 
 stranger to this world, should exert its influence and lavish its 
 benefits upon the abstractions and generalities of this very world, 
 upon those hights that divide heaven from earth ? In these 
 regions, however, Christianity has a morality, a grand morality. 
 But is it unknown or superior to that of Judaism ? Must the 
 master, after having given the pupil all, learn from him the 
 very things that constitute his forte and speciality the world, 
 life, and humanity ? 
 
 We shall soon examine in detail the greatest virtues that have 
 illustrated the teachings of Christianity. For the present ws 
 shall confine ourselves to general rules. Like all religions and 
 philosophies, Christianity has general maxims or principles that 
 seem the special features, the germs, the creative elements of its 
 whole moral code. Judaism, as we are about see, is rich, very 
 rich in generalizations of this kind. Everything, to the passage 
 giving the Christian fundamental rule, shows this. On what 
 occasion does Jesus give the summary of the whole law in the 
 love of God and man? When the scribe, who had heard him 
 dispute, asked him, which is the great commandment in the law? 
 a question indicating a habit of generalization on the part of 
 the scribe then Jesus replied : Tliou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God, &c. . . . And the second resembles the first : Love thy 
 neighbor as thyself.* An analogous passage occurs in Matthew 
 vii. 12 : "Whatever ye would that men do to you, do ye like- 
 wise to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Now is 
 this method unknown to Judaism ? Can the Gospel illustrations, 
 in its echos from the Bible, compete for beauty, grandeur and 
 holiness, with those given us by traditional Judaism ? Have we 
 no maxims, no examples to vie with the Christian ethics, and 
 which can both explain the origin of those very Gospel ideas, 
 and establish with still greater certainty the superiority of 
 Hebrew ethics ? The reader will answer for himself these ques- 
 tions. In the monuments of tradition, these recapitulations of 
 the law, these general maxims comprehending all the parts 
 with all their beauties, frequently occur. We shall spare the 
 reader these precepts thus crowning the law as its full and^last 
 expression the Sabbath, for example, the tzitzit, and many 
 others. We shall limit ourselves to those the most numerous 
 that are exclusively moral, and that are, according to the 
 doctors, the key-stone of the law ; not that they ever intended to 
 subordinate and perhaps sacrifice, after the fashion of Jesus, the 
 
 Mrk, ix 
 
48 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 ceremonial law to the purely rational ethics, but because they 
 regarded the latter as the base, the indispensable condition of 
 a greater elevation ; just as in physics, animal life, instinct, good 
 sense, reason, genius, are the several steps of a ladder that we 
 must use in succession to reach safely a summit. This is exactly 
 the Cabalistic theory taught by R. Isaac Louria's greatest dis- 
 ciple in his Schaari Kedouscha, and, several centuries before, 
 under somewhat more philosophic influences, by the author of 
 Cozri. However, this method, these maxims abound with the 
 doctors. And, what is remarkable, they not only make more 
 admirable ones for themselves, but they carry the chain of their 
 tradition, exclusively ethical of this generalizing process, back to 
 the prophets, any one of whom almost, would have compressed 
 the whole series of God's commands into a few striking maxims 
 In this way would David present the whole law in eleven com- 
 mandments: "Aim at perfection, do justice, speak truth accord- 
 ing to your mind, slander not, injure no one, be not ashamed of 
 your relations, be humble, honor those who fear God, swear to 
 your own hurt and keep your oath, take no usury, take no bribe 
 to destroy the innocent." And similarly Isaiah reduced the 
 number to six: " Be just, speak rightly, shun unlawful gains, 
 touch not a bribe, listen not to counsel for blood, look not at 
 vice." And Micah simplifies still further the rules of salvation : 
 "O man, what does God require of thee ? To do justice, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with Him." Are we done? Not 
 yet. Amos advanced a step, and summed the whole law in a 
 single precept, which indeed has a strong resemblance to Paul's 
 system, but, to our view, simply a literal one ; namely FAITH.* 
 And should the great Moses have been less synthetic than his 
 disciples? "Do you remember" say the Pharisees, "when 
 Moses said to Israel: 'You shall follow your God the Ever- 
 lasting,' Israel replied: 'Who can walk the paths of the 
 Eternal?' Is it not written, 'The whirlwind and the tempest 
 go before him.' " And Moses replied, "No; I shall show you the 
 ways of the Eternal ; all his ways are charity and truth." 't Let 
 us pass to the doctors themselves. Should they be inferior to the 
 prophets, to the examples set before them ? We shall see. 
 Simeon, the Just, prior by several centuries to the Master of 
 Nazarath, and with whom the Rabbinical era just opens, declared 
 (Torah), religious science, worship and charity, to be the three 
 pillars that sustain all society 4 Have we not here the arche- 
 types of the three theological Christian virtues, Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity ? I incline to think so. The Hebraic genius ever 
 
 * Talmud, Maccot, 23, t Midrash. * Abbot, chap. t. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 49 
 
 shows itself in this f ormtila. Like Christianity, assigning to charity 
 the highest rank, it ever associates this virtue with science and wor- 
 ship; science (knowledge of the Law) , which tends directly to action, 
 as Hillel says : The ignorant (boor) cannot avoid sin, and his disciples 
 say, Great truly is science that, leads to practice; science that leaves reason 
 all its rights ; science, fruitful, active, luminous, instead of that bar- 
 ren, passive, instinctive, not to say blind, faith that rules in Christ- 
 ianity ; worship, pious deeds, but always deeds instead of hope, a 
 virtue purely contemplative and idle. Need we relate Hillel's cele- 
 brated answer to the proselyte ? Criticism has already seized it and 
 all know it. Only let us mark two circumstances that appear from 
 a comparison of Hillel's saying with that of Jesus (Mat. vii. 12.) 
 The thought, as we know, is in both cases the same ; but the form 
 is so too, and especially the closing epiphonemas are very similar. 
 After Hillel said: What thou dislikest do not to thy neighbor, he added: 
 In this is the whole Law Jesus : It is the Law and the Prophets. But 
 while Jesus (or perhaps Matthew, on account of the Gentiles, to 
 whom Judaism was not to be preached) stops here, Hillel takes 
 care to add : The rest is but the commentary, go and learn it. This is 
 not all. Christianity, that took this saying from Jewish tradition, 
 imitates the Pharisee Hillel not only in the sense of the doctrine, 
 but also in its application, namely, to evangelize the Gentiles ; for 
 it was to a Gentile, desirous of becoming acquainted with Judaism, 
 that Hillel summed it up in the precept, Love thy neighbor. 
 
 But years pass, every thing changes, dies ; country, independence, 
 peace, happiness, liberty Jewish ethics alone survives unchanged. 
 About two centuries after Hillel we get it once more from the lips 
 of the most distinguished doctors. But what gives special value to 
 the maxims we are about to read, is that their authors were two of 
 the four celebrated doctors who entered Pardis, nairely, two mas- 
 ters venerable in cabalistic science, whence Christianity has de- 
 rived its dogmas and very probably its ethics also Essenico-Cab- 
 alistic ethics. Those doctors are, first, the great Talmudist and 
 martyr Akiba, who teaches : Love thy neighbor as thyself, this is the 
 great principle of the Law; and then his colleague, Ben-Azai, who 
 said : MAN WAS MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, this is the great princi- 
 ple of the Law ; Take care then not to say : As lam made nought of, be 
 my brother also esteemed nought ; as I am cursed, be my brother also 
 cursed; for if thou doest so, know that he whom thou despises and 
 curses is the image of God himself* 
 
 Wo have seen from the Gospel itself (Mark xii. 28) how the 
 Pharisees could sum the whole Law in general maxims, and we 
 
 * Bereschit Rabba, sect 24 
 
50 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 shall now see, from the Gospels likewise, the same views exactly 
 respecting those virtues by which the Law was so summed. In 
 Mark as well as in Luke is this clearly shown. In the first, the 
 scribe who comes to question Jesus, probably to test his doctrine, 
 as many other passages lead us to suppose after listening to him 
 to the end says (xii. 32, 33) : " Master, thou hast said the truth, that 
 there is but one only God . . . and that to love God with all the soul .... 
 and one's neighbor as one's self, is more than all the whole burnt offerings 
 and sacrifices." This, surely, is not the language of a man who 
 questioned for instruction, but truly of one who wished to sound 
 the doctrine of another, and who, finding it in accordance with his 
 own ideas, repeats it under the form we have seen. And as far as 
 this preeminence over holocausts and sacrifices, there is nothing that 
 does not attest the originality of the Pharisaical maxim, for these 
 are the very terms we find in the Talmud, as we are about 
 to see when speaking of Charity.* The same conclusion, clearer 
 still if possible, comes from Luke,f where the doctor .of the Law, 
 instead of questioning Jesus, is questioned himself. It is true that 
 we read (x. 25): " Master, what should I do," &c., TO TEST Jessis, 
 as we are told ; which indicates the scribe's object in Mark. But as 
 to the maxim itself, the doctor of the Law in Luke takes it from 
 himself, instead of confining himself to an approval, as in Mark ; 
 for when Jesus asks (verse 26) : " What is written in the 
 Law?" he answers, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, &c., 
 and thy neighbor as thyself ;" that is to say, two precepts which, 
 considering the great distance that separates them in the Law (one 
 in Leviticus, the other in Deuteronomy) , could not have been 
 brought into contiguity by the doctor if tradition had not anteriorly 
 made them the two inseparable parts of one formula, which the 
 doctor then only repeated for Jesus. Thus the 1 Gospels themselves 
 show the anteriority of generalization and of maxims in the Phari- 
 saical school. 
 
 * Charity is greater than all the sacrifices. t Luke x. 28. 
 
JETVISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 51 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 HUMILITY. 
 
 ABRAHAM AND MOSES. THE BIBLE. THE "POOR rn SPIRIT. "-^THE KINGDOM AND THE 
 EARTH THAT ABE TO BE THEIE HERITAGE. CABALISTIC SENSE NECESSARY FOB THE 
 
 COMPREHENSION OF THE LAW. GREATNESS Of THE HUMBLE. AUTHORITY. El- 
 
 AMPLE OP JESUS. SUBMISSION TO INJURY. OTHER BEATITUDES. THE PERSECUTED. 
 PRIDE. ANGEB. SEBPBNT AND DOVB. THE CHILD. SELF-DENIAL. VOLUXTABY 
 POVERTY. 
 
 If Christian ethics boasts that it taught men charity, it arrogates 
 *io less the honor of having taught them humility. It should, how- 
 ever, remember that the two greatest Hebrews, one the spiritual 
 father, the other the political father of ancient Israel, are emi- 
 nently and proverbially distinguished for their humility. Abraham 
 esteemed himself but dust and ashes (Gen. xviii. 27); Moses, as 
 the Scripture states with singular precision, was the humblest of all 
 men upon ike earth : a phrase well emphasized, and showing the man 
 of God in a light not hitherto sufficiently appreciated, and that in- 
 vests him, the first, with that aureole of goodness and mildness 
 usually ascribed only to the son of Mary. But far from that, the 
 latter is rather a fiery spirit in an iron mould ; he preeminently 
 possesses the will, force, and energy that are bat apportioned in 
 the Hebrew law-giver. "We should gain too easy a victory by con- 
 trasting Judaism with Christianity on the score of humanity. We 
 might turn to the Bible, that abounds in passages where the hum- 
 ble, the meek, the poor in spirit are put at an elevation unknown to 
 the Gospels. But since, as we have said, learned Hebrew writers 
 have fully criticized the Bible, and since Christianity, if not abso- 
 lutely playing the part of innovator, has so loudly proclaimed its 
 mission as reformer, as restorer of Biblical ethics disfigured by the 
 Pharisees, it is time to sift its claims once for all before another 
 tribunal besides the Church, to wit, that of free Criticism. 
 
 "When Jesus uttered on the mountain-top these celebrated words : 
 Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; 
 Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth ; and elsewhere : 
 Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, &c., was this ^.uything 
 new for Palestine, anything that was not reechoed each day in its 
 temples, schools, and assemblies ? A word first upon the true-ex- 
 position of the preceding f:- \qrments. No doubt but that by " poor 
 in spirit" is meant the humbte, for quite similarly do the Rabbis des- 
 ignate them, nemokerouah (humble in spirit) , from the literal trans- 
 lation of which comes the English phrase one of the thousand 
 
52 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 traces of the Babbinico-Aramean origin of the Gospels, uut it is 
 to the promise that ends the verses we would call attention. 
 
 In the first, theirs is the kingdom of heaven ; in the second, they 
 shall inherit the earth. The latter, we remark, is but a verse taken 
 from the Psalms (Psl. xxxvii. 11) . But is there a real synonym in 
 these expressions? It is very probable that there is, above all if we 
 bear in mind the sense we have given to the Gospel " kingdom of 
 heaven, "viz.: that of Malchout, the last emanation of the Cabalists, 
 their kingdom of heaven. Now, this kingdom seems to be doubly iden- 
 tified with the object of Jesus' promise ; first because it takes, in 
 preference to all others, the name earth, synonymous with kingdom, 
 as Jesus uses it ; and again, because this earth, precisely as in the 
 Gospels, is promised by the Cabalists to the meek and humble. 
 And we have but to glance at the Zohar where averse almost iden- 
 tical with that of the Psalm, Tzadikim yireschou aretz, is interpreted 
 in the same manner, and aretz, earth, is said expressly to be the 
 synonym of kingdom to be assured both as to the sense we here 
 give the Gospel kingdom, and as to the synonyms of the Kingdom of 
 verse 3, and the Earth of verse 5. Besides, is it not the most com- 
 mon and well-known doctrine among the Cabalists ? Is it not the 
 Schechina that is called anava (humility) ,* and which explains Je- 
 sus' characteristic humility, that other incarnation, that other Malc- 
 hout ? Is it not from this that comes inspiration ? f Is it not be- 
 cause of their natural humility that the poor are called the temple 
 or car of the Schechina, of the Kingdom ? t Is it not as a similar 
 term that the Zohar first, and then the Ticounim || call the Kingdom 
 humility? Here doubtless are passages of great importance in the 
 present question, and that seem to confirm all our conjectures. 
 
 But is this idea itself, apart from all cabalistic interpretation, 
 unknown to Pharisaical Judaism ? Is this partiality for the humble, 
 is the special aptitude of these to become chosen vessels for all that 
 concerns science, faith, and holiness, unknown to the Pharisees? 
 Far from that; nothing comes so frequently to their lips. "With 
 the humble God makes his Schechina rest, "ft Who is the true sage ? 
 said an ancient doctor; he who may be taught by all.** God's 
 science is not in the. heavens, said Moses; that is to say, add the doc- 
 tors, thou shalt not find it in those whose pride reaches the sky.ff 
 Where, on the contrary, shall one find it? in the lowly-minded, like- 
 water that comes from the mountains to sojourn in the valleys.Jt 
 One is not ashamed, they say elsewhere, to ask even an inferior for 
 water to slake thirst ; so the great should not blush to ask the mean- 
 
 * Reschit<!hokma, schaar-haanava. t Ibid. J Ibid, Chap. I. 
 
 % Vol. Ill, page 230. II Reschit Chokma, ibid. H Sota. 
 
 ** Aboth, IV. ft Talmud, Treatise Eroubin, f. 55. tt Taanit, page 7. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 53 
 
 est for information as to the law.* Of this has not Juda the Holy, 
 set us the most striking example ? Has he not learned, as an humble 
 disciple, his own doctrines that he had forgotten, from the mouth of 
 a poor artisan ?f Moreover, of the two rival doctrines of Hillel and 
 Schammai, which one has definitely prevailed in Israel ? That of the 
 first, indeed, in consequence of his humility. He it is whom they 
 propose as a model, saying : Be humble always like Hillel, and not 
 overbearing like Schammai. I But what is of special importance to 
 our subject, is that always and everywhere humility has been con- 
 sidered an indispensable requisite for the study of the formidable 
 mysteries of the Mercaba, that is, as we think, of the doctrines that 
 originated those of Jesus. From the most remote Tahnudical times, 
 to the Cabalists of the middle ages, all with one accord have 
 required of the initiated perfect humility above all things. 
 
 We come now to the greatness of the humble, of those who are at 
 present the last, and who shall become the first, who humble themselves 
 now and who shall be exalted.^ Is not this a repetition of ancient 
 Rabbinical doctrine ? " What should a man do to win the love of 
 mankind?" asks Alexander the Great of the doctors of the South 
 (the Essenes, as we think) . Lat him hate dominion and authority, 
 say the doctors. No, says Alexander, my^ maxim is better than 
 yours; let him love them, that he may have the power to serve men. || 
 Has not tradition preserved a favorite saying of the elder Hillel, 
 long prior to Christianity: "My abasement shall be my elevation, 
 and my elevation my abasement. "^[ Is it not he who said : " He who 
 grows proud shall perish."** Is not the following saying his master 
 Abalion's? " Flee grandeur, "ff Has not one of the most ancient 
 doctors said: " Ba humble even to excess, for is not man's last hope 
 the worms of his grave ?"JJ Did not their disciples say: " Be lowly 
 .... whoever humbles himself shall be exalted, and whoever exalts 
 himself shall be humbled. |$ Whoever makes naught of himself here 
 below for the I^aw's sake, shall be glorified hereafter. "|||| To him 
 who said he had seen in a dream the world reversed, that is to-say, 
 the mountains down and the valleys up, did they not answer: " No, 
 thou hast seen the actual world ?"^[ And, in short, have they not 
 summed the principle concisely thus : " Who is great is little, and 
 who is little is great ?"*** Moreover, what splendid promises are 
 made them! What precious privileges are given them! They shall 
 enjoy the Holy Spirit, as the old Baraita of R. Pinchas Ben Jair 
 teaches, with whom .humility holds tha first rank of all virtues, 
 
 * Taanit, I. f Nedarim, IV. f Eroubin, xiii. 
 
 Marc. X, 31, fcc. Jl Talmud, Tamid.. ^Vayicra, Rabba,-sect.81. 
 
 ** Aboth, Chap. 1. ft Ibid. ft Ibid, Chap. IV. 
 
 Talmud, Eroubin, fol. 13. jlil Talmud, Berach, EC. Iffl Ibid, PesahinvfoL 60, 
 
 *** Zohar, sect Schelach-leka. 
 
54 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 " The world to come," reply the doctors of Palestine to those of 
 Babylon, " belongs to those who bend their knees, to the humble, 
 the submissive, to those who meditate constantly and without being 
 vain.* Their sins shall be forgiven who esteem themselves as 
 abortions, as vile refuse."f If the fear of God is the crown of 
 sages, it is but the shoe of the humble ; J their prayer shall be 
 granted, as they deem themselves but miserable flesh." $ And 
 finally, " God himself shall be their crown." || Was anything 
 stronger ever heard from the lips of Jesus or his apostles ? 
 
 Here a question very interesting and, in more than one way, 
 applicable to our subject, presents itself. What is the Gospel idea 
 as to sovereign authority ? Doubtless, in the midst of paganism, 
 that, in practice at least, recognized no right but that of force, 
 worshiped divine right enthroned, and thought sovereignty the 
 privilege of birth, skill, or fortune only, the Gospel first pro- 
 claimed this great, fruitful idea that authority is nothing but a 
 charge, an office, a servitude. In $ the Gospel we feel the new doc- 
 trine attacking, in close conflict, the old, and driving it to its fur- 
 thest intrenchments. Ye [know, said Jesus to his disciples, that 
 the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are 
 great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you ; 
 but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and 
 whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. A right 
 which, though long a mere tkeory, failed not to temper occasionally, 
 from the hight of the Christian tribunal, the rigors of despotism, 
 that the apathy of Christianity as to social life, had permitted 
 to the thrones of Europe. Has Judaism ever taught anything 
 else ? Was the king ever other than the first subject of the law, 
 the ruler, in the sense of the old Roman republic? Was royalty, 
 according to the great definition of the doctors, aught else than 
 servitude ?fi Was not David himself, that elect of God, quite 
 legally degraded to the rank of simple citizen, when his popularity 
 waned, and the sympathies of all were on Absalom's side ? Is it not 
 true, what the doctors say, that all human grandeur is bestowed only 
 for the weal of Israel ?** But Jesus, it will be said, points the remark : 
 " For," said he, "even the son of man has not come to be served, 
 but to serve." And when at table with his disciples : " I am in the 
 midst of you, as one who serves." Now, is not this still pure Phari- 
 saism ; for here, too, God (whose character Jesus here assumes) is 
 presented under the humblest forms, rendering personally to Israel 
 in the desert, all the services that Abraham had rendered to the 
 
 * Talmud. Sanhed. t Ibid, Bosch, hasclirfoLlT. t MidraBch, hazita. 
 
 Talmud, Sota, fol. 5. fllbid Meghilla, II Talmud. Heroyoth. foL 10. 
 
 ** Talm. Berach, foL 32. 
 
JEWISH AXD CHRISTIAN ETHI 
 
 angels in the valley of Mambre ? And this is not 
 
 (as we might show were it the place) of a reprodi ,^^ _ 1f -- 
 
 intercourse with his disciples, of the striking characteristics of 
 ancient Jewish history. 
 
 Nothing is more closely allied to humility than long-suffering, 
 and nothing, moreover, seems to be more the specialty of the 
 gospel ethics. Is this, indeed, its parent? Has not this ethics 
 found in Judaism maxims already made, of a character far superior, 
 of a data far older ? The famous precept, to offer the other cheek 
 when smitten, had been long before suggested by his country's suf- 
 ferings to Jeremiah, and criticism has already noticed it. Is Solo- 
 mon's precept less precious? Bz thy heart, he said, insensible to 
 what may be said against thee, even though thou shouldst hear thy slave 
 curse thee* We shall not multiply citations from the Bible ; as the 
 Pharisees are on trial, they are the persons accused of being infe- 
 rior to Jesus ; these therefore we should ask for an account of their 
 ethics. The world, they say, is held together only by the merit of 
 those who close tlie mouth when disputations arise.^ And to sum all 
 in one fine sentence : They who bzar injury wiUiout returning it, they 
 wko hear themselves slandered and retort not, whose only impulse is love, 
 to/to welcome with Joy the evils of life, for them is it written in the proph- 
 ets : Tha friends of God shall shine like the sun in his glory. J 
 
 Let us here briefly examine a few other " beatitudes" related to 
 the virtue of which we treat. Happy are they who weep, said Jesus, 
 "for they shall be comforted. Pharisaism also had said : " Whoever 
 mourns for Jerusalem shall share its-future joy."g " The tears of the 
 distressed reach easily the throne of God."|| " They are the greatest 
 help, the most necessary condition to every prayer. "<[ And what is 
 noticeable is that the acknowledged chief of the Cabalistic school, 
 R. Simeon Ben Jochai, is the author of the following maxim : Man 
 is not allowed to laugh unrestrainedly in this world. Jesus continues 
 (Mat. v. 7) : Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. And 
 the Pharisees : " Whoever shows mercy shall g.et it from God;"** or 
 again, in a more general way : " As you measure, so shall it be meted 
 unto you ;"ff and under this same form we meet the same thought in 
 the Gospels. We read also : " Happy are the peace-makers, for they 
 shall be called children of God." And this virtue is set down by the 
 Pharisees among those that will be rewarded in this life and in the 
 next \%% Aaron's distinctive trait was that he reconciled brethren ; 
 this is the virtue that Hillel the Elder recommended, saying : " Be a 
 
 * Eccles, vii. 21. t Talmud, Houllin, fol. 89. I Ibid, Schab, fol. 88, ic. 
 
 Ibid, Taanitlv-fol. 30. II Ibid, Baba metsia, fol 59. f Treat, Berachot, foL 30. 
 
 ** Talmud. rt Ibid, Sota, foL 8 and pass. Mischna, treat, Peah.. Chap, L 
 
56 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 follower of Aaron, loving peace, and seeking it everywhere, loving 
 men and bringing them to the Law."* 
 
 Not all yet: Happy, says Jesus, are they who are persecuted fof 
 Justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Wouldst thou know t 
 say the Pharisees, how much God loves the persecuted ? See the animals 
 he chooses for sacrifice. Are there any more persecuted than the sheep, 
 the pigeon, and the dove ? Now God just prefers these to all other animals. 
 But we must not conceal that the Pharisaical ethics not only 
 rivals that of the Gospels, but transcends it when needed. Jesus 
 exclaims : " Happy those persecuted for the sake of righteousness ;" that 
 is, doubtless, those persecuted in the wrong, against all justice. 
 But how, if the persecuted are guilty ? No one knows. As to the 
 Pharisees, their mercy knows no bounds, their charity is of a shade 
 so delicate, of a tenderness so fine, that misery makes them forget 
 all. They say, with Solomon : God is found on the side of the perse- 
 cuted. Is it only, they add, when the oppressed and the oppressors are 
 equally just or impious f Is it only when the oppressor is an unjust man 
 and the oppressed a just one ? No ; though the oppressor were just and 
 the oppressed unjust, God is ever on the side of the latter.^ 
 
 * An ethics that attains such hights has no rival to fear. Like Mo- 
 ses, who, according to the doctors, strove with the angels, it touches 
 the very throne of God. 
 
 If there be a vice opposed to humility, it is pride and anger. 
 Though the Gospel condemns both by implication in its exhortations 
 to humility and meekness, it is very far from reaching that vehe- 
 mence of condemnation which the Pharisees incessantly pour upon 
 them And we shall still be told, that those against whose pride 
 and inordinate vanity Jesus thought proper to inveigh, were the 
 holy doctors of Israel ! See the proud ! they say, ' ' they deserve to 
 bo uprooted like idolatrous groves. Their dust shall not rise on the 
 resurrection rnorn.J Though they should have reconciled heaven 
 and earth with God (as did Abraham) , they could not escape the 
 pains of hell."3 " Let them be to you as idolaters, atheists, or the 
 incestuous. The Scheehina laments for them ; they and I it says 
 cannot live together in the world. "|| 
 
 As to the horror, in fact, with which the Pharisees regarded pride, 
 we could cite examples without end. One, I hope, will suffice to 
 show with what sort of pride the Gospels reproach the Pharisees. 
 Habbi Simeon, son of Gamliel, and Rabbi Ismael, the high priest, 
 were led to martyrdom. The former began to weep. " Simeon, my 
 brother, why weepest thou?" asked his companion; "two steps 
 more, and thou wilt be in heaven, beside thy fathers." "Why 
 
 *Aboth, Chap. III. tVayikra Rabba, Chap. 27. J Sota, Chap. I. Ibid. II Ibid. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 67 
 
 should I not weep, answered the other, " when I share the lot of 
 idolators, incestuous people, homicides, and breakers of the Sab- 
 bath ?" " Has it never happened," replied the Kabbi, " that some 
 one came to consult thee on a case of conscience, and that thy ser- 
 vants, seeing thee at table or in bed, sent him away ? " " No," re- 
 plied the other, " they had orders never to repel any one, whatever 
 the time or circumstance. But God is just : once I was seated at 
 my tribunal and the parties were standing waiting my judgment, j 
 showed on that occasion pride, and God punishes me to-day." 
 
 And does the passionate man fare better ? Already, before Jesus, 
 had the Bible condemned him ; the most ancient doctors had said : 
 *' Be not given to wrath."* They refined soon upon the old max- 
 ims : " "Whoever," they tell us, " abandons himself to anger, has no 
 respect for the Schechina itself."! " If the passionate man be a pro- 
 phet his inspiration leaves him ; if a doctor, he forgets his learn- 
 ing. "J Who would believe it ? The Pharisees, all submissive as 
 they were to the authority of the Prophets, hesitated not to write 
 these words : " "Why was Elias snatched so soon from the earth? 
 Because he gave way to anger and caused Baal's prophets to be 
 slain. Then God took him from the world, saying : ' The earth 
 needs not men like thee.' " $ Jesus condemns only causeless an- 
 ger (Mat. v. 22) ; the Pharisees condemn it even when reasonable. 
 
 There is a sentence in the Gospels connected with our present 
 subject. Sending his twelve disciples to preach to the Jews, Jesus 
 cautions them: Be ye wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Does 
 this idea, which is not ignoble and lacks not finesse if only for the 
 antithesis, belong exclusively to Jesus and the Gospels ? The Phar- 
 isees find its elements in the Bible. In one place they see Israel 
 compared to the bravest and fiercest carnivora, to the lion, the wolf, 
 and especially the serpent ; in another it is to a dove God likens 
 his Church. Whence this contradiction? "Ah" ! say the doctors; 
 " Israel is strong as a lion, wise as a serpent, but also innocent as a 
 dove : strong and prudent with wolves into whose midst he is sent, 
 to keep their strength at bay, to thwart their crafty schemes ; but, 
 innocent as the dove that gives its neck to death, Israel goes joy- 
 fully to martyrdom for his God and his faith. "|j 
 
 Another of Jesus' favorite symbols is the child. David, many 
 ages before, had said : ' O Eternal, my heart is not haughty, nor 
 mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in things too high for 
 me, but I have considered my soul as a child in its mother's arms." 
 (Ps. 131) The doctors went further still. They placed the figure 
 
 * Abath, Chap. II. t Talmud, Nedarim. j: Ib. Pesachun, f. 6. 
 
 t Talmud, Schabbath, Chap. II. || Midrasch, treat Schabb, f. 119. 
 
58 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 of a child in the holy Mercaba, beside the Cherubs of Ezekiel. They 
 taught that the world has no better stay than the pure breath of 
 children ;* comparing this breath with that of the holiest Pharisees, 
 they say: "Far different is the breath that find? the taste of sin 
 (that of the Pharisees) from that (the child's) which finds it not."f 
 They represent God as a tender father pleased at their childish 
 studies, at their first stammerings in the holy Law ; they esteemed 
 their mind* the sharpest for heavenly things, and gave them priority 
 as totha revelations about the Red Sea and Sinai, where, they say, 
 the child, seabed on its mother's knees, was the first to raise its head, 
 to recognize the Eternal, and to utter these words of the Canticle : 
 There is my God, " Wouldst thou know how much children are loved 
 by God ? When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, the 
 representatives of all Israel (who were there for the sacrifices) , went 
 away, but the Schechina still remained. The Sanhedrim broken up, 
 the Scheshina still rested within its walls ; but when the children 
 ware carried away prisoners, then the Schechina went with them, 
 for it is written : * Thy children have walked captives before the 
 enemy; then departed from Sion all its glory' "(Lam. I, 5-6). And 
 to sum all, the doctors arranged for the Synagogue prayers, wherein, 
 with the merits of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are invoked those of 
 innocent childhood. Bat what is at once the type and the explana- 
 tion of Jesus' partiality for children, is this remarkable statement 
 from the Zohar : Little children who die young are taught in Paradise 
 by the Messiah himself. 
 
 Another kindred virtue is truth, which Jesus seems to recommend 
 by condemning duplicity and hypocrisy. Is this a virtue unknown 
 to the Pharisees ? Truth ! which, vriih justice and peace, as says an 
 ancient doctor, makes one of the three pillars of society. J The seal 
 of God is truth ; a sublime saying that lifts us to Plato. Who shall 
 not see God's face ? First, hypocrites, then liars. Imitate, rather, 
 Bab Safra. An article of his was being sold ; a higher price was 
 constantly offered, since the doctor, who was praying, would not 
 stop to reply. When done, he said to the buyer, " My friend, take 
 it at such a price (a lower one) , sin33 at that I resolved to sail it.'' 
 For such a man, say the doctors, || has David said, " O God, who 
 shall be worthy to dwell in thy tabernacle, upon thy holy mountain ? 
 He who speaks the truth in his heart." Is it a virtue less needful to 
 the Pharisees ? Hear then : " Let man be ever submissive to God's 
 will, in private as well as in public" (repeated, from a very old text, 
 every day by the Israelite) . " The doctor, whose interior is not as 
 his exterior, deserves not the title, doctor, "ft He should be cast 
 
 * Talmu 1, trait. Schabb, f. 119. t Talmud, trait. Schabb, f. 119. t Aboth, Chap. I. 
 g Yoma, f jl. 69, &c. Talmud, Baba, Bathr., f. 88, &c. If Yoma, f. 72. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 59 
 
 to tho do'p.* Let him beware of all lyin-j, evan of telling a child, 
 " I shall givo tli 3 3 something," if he msaris not to give ; for he 
 would lie and teach the child to lie.f Is more wanted? Wo meet 
 nothing till we reach the simile by which Jesus expresses the 
 hyp02risy of the psuedo-Pharisees, viz., whitened sepulchres. This 
 is found in the oldest Pharisaism, and, moreover, is applied, just as 
 Jesus applies it, to falsa Pharisees. Gamliel (the same, perhaps, 
 who taught Saul) having withheld the right of entrance to the 
 academy from every Pharisee whose sincerity was not well known, 
 whose iitside WT.S not as his outsi<3,e (in the words of the Babbies), 
 reproved himself for his severity, saying, " Alas! perhaps I have 
 deprived soma noble soul, hidden in the miss, of the word of God." 
 To calm his scruples, he was shown, in a dream, whitened barrels full 
 of ashes, and a voice said to him : " These are the Pharisees whom 
 thou hast repelled." 
 
 The love of truth brings us to self-denial, one of those virtues 
 most recommended in the Gospels. He, we are told (John, XII, 25) , 
 who loves his own life shall lose it ; but he who despises it shall find it in 
 life eternal ; and Paul to the Romans (VIII, 13): "If ye live after 
 the flesh ye shall die ; but if ye mortify the lusts of the flesh through 
 the spirit ye shall live." Could both be ignorant of a tradition current 
 in Judea from Alexander's time ? The so n of Philip was not above 
 putting some questions to the doctors of the South (very probably 
 the Essenes), and among others the following : "What should 
 man do to live? Let him die. And what should he do to die? 
 Let him live, they replied. "% Where shall you find the Law? In 
 him who fears not, for its sake, utter privation, $ who hesitates not 
 to be esteemed a fool,|| and to sacrifice for it life itself.^ " He who 
 is worthy of being my follower," said Jesus, " must brave all suffer- 
 ing." " Whosoever takes not up his cross to follow me, is not 
 worthy of me." It is from Pharisaism, evidently, that he takes this 
 language, while, however, supplanting the Law, truth, justice, 
 G)d (alone worthy, according to the doctors, of every sacrifice) , by 
 his personality, bythe /of Jesus. W The carrying of his cross, scarcely 
 reaches the idea of the cross, that his masters, the Pharisees, long 
 
 * Talmud. t Succa, f. 46. J Talmud, tr. Tamid, Chap. IV, 
 
 Sota, Chapter 2. II Ibid. ^ Talmud, Berach, 63, &c. 
 
 ** Ibid. Trait. Berachot, fol. 5. 
 
 [ 1. ] And truly, whatever he lacked of self-glorification and self-sufficiency, his follow- 
 era, putting him in tho very stead of God and calling him (Rev. XII, 13) the Alpha, and 
 Omr.ga, (a. phrase applicable exclusively to the Deity, seelsa, XLIV, 6), have amply supplied. 
 Whether or not such an arrogation be a breach of the first Commandment, a consideration 
 of Isaiah, Chapter 42, 8, " I am the Lord, that is my name ; and my glory will I not give to 
 another;" and, 43, 10th and llth verse, "and besides Mt there if no Savior," may help 
 Christians to decide. [Tram. 
 
60 JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 oefore expressed. Who, for them, is Isaac carrying the wood for - 
 his own pyre '? He is the mail bearing the cross. Is there aught in 
 this world finer, dearer, more sacred than country, than the Law , 
 (Thora), than Heaven ( Olam Jiabba)? Well ! neither Law, country, 
 nor heavenly bliss can be gained without grief, suffering and self- 
 denial.** And who is the author of this great truth ! Rabbi Simeon, 
 Ben Jochai, the man whose teachings have inspired all Christianity, 
 its dogmas as well as its ethics. And what commentary on this law 
 of self-denial more quick than the history of Judaism ! God "shows 
 his goodness even to the thousandth generation of those who love 
 him," says Moses. Who loves him, adds the Mekhilta, better than 
 Israel, who died a thousand times for him ? Why art thou led to 
 the scaffold? Because I circumcised my child. Why art thou 
 nailed to the cross? Because I have obeyed the commands of the 
 Most high. Why art thou whipped ? Because I have taken up the 
 loulab (palm-branch) 
 
 In vain does Christian ethics, as if to defy the ancient ethics of 
 Israel, raise the standard of its requirements ; it finds the latter al- 
 ways beyond it. To the rich man, who asks to follow him, Jesus 
 says: " Go sell all thou hast and give to the poor ; it is harder for a 
 rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass 
 through the eye of a needle." We do not here investigate the effect 
 of this condemnation of wealth upon social life. We know that when 
 Christianity saw not the era of the resurrection dawning as quickly 
 as it expected, when, with good grace or with bad, it found itself 
 engaged in our actual life, with its needs, demands, and future, it 
 took care to distinguish counselirom precept, and simply recommend- 
 ed voluntary poverty. If we were examining this aspect of the 
 question, we should remark that so absolute a judgment from Jesus 
 against the rich and riches, that the constant and general practice 
 in the primitive church of each one's selling his property and lay- 
 ing it at the feet of the apostles (as in the terrible example of Ana- 
 nias and Saphira) , do not permit us to make any sort of distinction. 
 If we are deeply convinced of anything it is that, as Jesus pre- 
 tended to make the highest and most exceptional Pharisaical doc- 
 trines common property, so he pretended to impose on mankind 
 those exceptional virtues, those heroic acts, that ascetic morality, 
 that absolute self -detachment of which the greatest Pharisees often 
 gave examples ; in short, to bestow upon the Pagan masses the the- 
 ology and ethics of the Mystics, and to stifle the world in an Essenic 
 cloister 
 
 These examples, however, exist. Useless to name the Bekabites 
 who, from the time of Jeremiah, at the command of the prophet, 
 renounced the holding of personal property ; or the Essenes (whose 
 
JEWISH AND CHPJSTIAN ETHICS. 61 
 
 connection with the former is nearer than is supposed) -who imi- 
 tated them in this point as in others still. But how pass over the 
 examples furnished us by the history of the Pharisees ? Monobaza, 
 King of Adiabene, brought up in Pharisaism, though keeping his 
 throne, learned doubtless from this school to give alms royally ; in 
 years of famine he opened the royal wealth to all his subjects, and the 
 remarks of courtiers only brought upon them that noble response to 
 which, when speaking of charity, we shall soon revert. Could we, 
 without injustice, suppress names as ancient as venerable ? Was it 
 from the Gospels that the ancient doctor Eleazar of Bartotha learned 
 to give his substance to the poor, to such a degree that the almoners 
 carefully avoided him, lest they should deprive him of his scant daily 
 earnings ? Was it from Jesus, whom he long preceded, that Hillel 
 learned to divide men into four classes according to each's love of 
 riches, and to rank him who said, " Mine is thine, even as is thine 
 own," with Hasid, a name, as we think, indicative of the Essenes ? 
 Was B. Isbab, who gave his blood for his country and all his goods 
 to the poor, taught by Christianity ? Was that Babbi Johanan a 
 Christian, who, walking with his disciples between Tiberias and 
 Sipporis, pointed now to a cornfield, now to an olive grove, now to 
 a vineyard, saying, I have sold all to devote myself to the study of the 
 Law ; and who said, smiling, to his disciple Hiya Bar Abba (who 
 wept because he had "reserved nothing for his old age ") : "My 
 son Hiya, thinkest thou not that I have made a good bargain? 
 I have exchanged things that were made in six days for those that 
 took forty days and as many nights?" The text adds : " When 
 Babbi Johanan died, his cotemporaries applied to him this verse 
 of the Canticle: Ma* gives all for love; Rabbi Johanan gave all for the 
 Law. 
 
 Are these but rare examples ? What we have said elsewhere of 
 the Essenes forbids us to think so. But the moral contagion that 
 had seized the Jewish masses, the renunciation of all wealth, volun- 
 tary poverty, this communism of love, went, it seems, so far in Pales- 
 tine, that a law had to interpose. The practical sense, sociability, 
 and moderation of the Judaic spirit soon set the law (that idol 
 of the Jews) between generosity and self-spoilation. And this 
 protective law was enacted at Ouscha where the doctors, meeting 
 to put a stop to this barren frittering of the public wealth, decreed 
 that it was unlawful for any one to give in alms more than a fifth of 
 his property ; an enormous figure, and one which well attests the 
 force and demands of that public spirit to which the doctors dared 
 not concede less than a fifth, so irresistible in Israel was the impulse 
 to Charity! 
 
62 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ACCUSATIONS OF JESUS. THEY STRIKE AT THE BIBLE AS WELZ, AS AT THE PHAKISEES. 
 Crm, LAW AND MOBAL LAW; NECESSITY OP DISTINGUISHING. CUPIDITY AND 
 ANGER CONDEMNED BY THE PHARISEES. THEIR EXPANSION or THE DECALOGUE. 
 SUPPOSED SUPERIORITY OF GOSPEL CHARITY. GOD is CHARITY. HEBREW CHARITY; 
 
 DISTINCT FROM ALMS WHICH IT EXCLUDES. THE THREE ENEMIES. WHO THE 
 
 ENEMY ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL COUNTRY AND SOCIETY IN CHRISTIANITY. 
 PARABLE OF THE SAMARITAN. 
 
 We have written the word charity. If there be any pretention 
 dating from the founder of Christianity, it is unquestionably that 
 of having supplanted the Law, the faith of Israel, by charity. 
 One has but to g anceat the fifth chapter of Matthew to see this pre- 
 tention to superiority, so lauded since. It is curious to see how the 
 emphasized protestations of Jesus against a desire to abolish the Law 
 blend with his assumption of superiority to it; a tendency not to be 
 denied, and one which he hides with difficulty under the idea of a 
 moral progress. " Think not I am come to destroy the Law or the 
 prophets ; I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill them" (verse 17) . 
 He explains this in detail in verse 21: "Ye have heard that it was 
 said by them of old time, thou shalt not kill . . . c ; but I say unto 
 you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall 
 be in danger of the judgment ; and whoever shall say to his brother, 
 Kaca, (wicked one) shall be in danger of the council ; but whosoever 
 shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." And further 
 on (verses 27 and 28) : " Ye have heard that it was said by them of 
 old time, thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, c." 
 It is this perpetual opposition, established by Jesus, between the 
 requirements of the Old Law and those of the new Covenant, that 
 we are about to examine. Is not the design of this Law to protect 
 the life, the character, or the property of man in the social state ? 
 And would not an injury to them be a flagrant violation of the sim- 
 plest duties of charity ? Ought we not see if Judaism be really 
 guilty of so grave omissions, before asking it how it has provided for 
 the performance of the positive duties of charity? Should not accu- 
 sations be rebutted before preferring one's claims to the gratitude of 
 mankind? We are sorry to say that these charges could not be more 
 formally made than in the words of Jesus; Judaism could not be 
 more directly accused, or its honor more assailed. Is it only tradi- 
 tion and the Pharisees that are struck at ? Impossible ; the 20th 
 verse, that seems to warrant this doubt, is but a bait for the igno- 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 63 ( 
 
 rant. The idea of progress, and consequently of imperfection, 
 about which we have spoken, above all those solemn words, " You 
 have heard what they said in old time," exclude the supposition of 
 the Pharisees merely ; and the Bible texts themselves, cited as proof 
 of imperfection, cap the impossibility of a construction that some- 
 times seems favorable for a Christian apology. It is then, beyond 
 doubt, that the Bible, Moses, God himself are arraigned, and we 
 might be tempted to let Christian ethics kill itself by that surcharge 
 of vanity which mines baneath itself a pit, wherein its own titles and 
 very foundation can forever disappear. The imputation is, however, 
 so bold and so opposed to the plainest facts, that it will not be with- 
 out use in this long-vexed question to see how they have managed 
 to foist upon the world notions that, even to-day, are not quite dis- 
 sipated. 
 
 As we have said before, we must, if we -would avoid error, care- 
 fully distinguish between two things in Judaism. There is the 
 civil law, that shields the life, honor, and property of the citizen, 
 and whose administration is confined to the Courts. And there is 
 the moral law, the duties whereof, a thousand times recalled in the 
 Bible, are naturally set forth in tradition and in the teachings of 
 the doctors. A double law corresponding to the two-fold character 
 of the Jews, to their polity and to their religion. The one is best 
 represented by the Mosaic code, the other by the prophets first and 
 by the doctors afterwards. Would it be right to judge of Jewish 
 ethics by the law of Moses? As well expect ,to find French mo- 
 rality in the Code civil, or English morality in the Magna Charta ! 
 No conclusion, then, could be come to against Judaism as long as 
 we limited ourselves solely to the Mosaic code. 
 
 But even within those just limits, can we say that Jesus is right ? 
 Is the superiority of his ethics to the Mosaic Law well established ? 
 No. If there be any point where these two constituents of Israel- 
 itic life, Jos f ice and Charity intersect, where the character of the 
 former is more closely moulded to that of the latter, where, in 
 short, the law is eminently charitable, it is precisely, we must say, 
 where Jesus selects the battle-ground for the two contending sys- 
 tems. Assuredly he could have made no worse choice. Let us 
 see. 
 
 Matt. V: 25: "Ye have heard what was said by them of old 
 time : thou shalt not commit adultery ; but I say unto you whosoever 
 looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery 
 with her already in his heart." Now, we need not search far to find 
 in the decalogue itself, the Tenth Commandment interdicting the de- 
 sire spoken of by Jesus. Was it calumny, or forgetfulness on his 
 part ? We think, neither. The key to the enigma is, we think, 
 
64 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 this : Tradition, while preserving the full force of the said com- 
 mandment, while giving the widest and most absolute interpreta- 
 tion to that of Deuteronomy, subjected, however, that of Exodus 
 (expressed differently) to one condition (so that the violator could 
 be prosecuted, which for a mere desire or intention could not have 
 been done) , namely : to that of actual commission. Then and then 
 only could the civil law interpose ; then only could there be adul- 
 tery, and not after a mere desire, as Jesus asserts. This is the 
 strange abuse which the Gospel makes of the Pharisaical exposition. 
 Far from abating the severity of the Mosaic Code, the doctors only 
 regulated the action of the Courts, established impassable limits for 
 human laws by carefully distinguishing what is cognizable by the 
 interior Court, where God alone presides, from the overt act cognizable 
 by the magistrate. Have they subtracted, thereby, aught from the 
 weight of the precept of Deuteronomy, where the verbage assumes, 
 to their view, quite a different latitude? In no wise ; and the proof 
 is the rigor of their own morals as to all kinds of impudicity. To 
 look on a woman with lust, to look at one of her fingers even, her 
 hair, to listen to her song, &c., all this was for the Pharisees not 
 indeed adultery, but grave sin ; which still gives but a faint idea of 
 their austerity in this respect. What precept can be more severe 
 than this : If thy right eye make a slip, tear it out and cast it from 
 tliee ; for it is better that one of thy members perish than that thy whole 
 body b-2 ca^t into hell. Well, before this precept was even written, 
 before Origen's strange application of it, Judaism venerated the 
 chief Pharisee at Rome, the hero Rabbi Mathia Ben Haras, who, 
 tormented by temptation, tore his eyes out, to be rid of it. 
 
 Were there no other proofs, Jesus himself could give us some. 
 For the worst accusation that Pharisaism could imagine against its 
 formidable foe, was that he one day said of some lovely Madeline, 
 " What fine eyes that girl has."* When one sees in this a grave 
 fault, a crime, one is far from a moral laxity. One remark still 
 remains as to the term adultery which Jesus gives to a mere 
 desire. What we are about to read will prove that, forget- 
 ting the civil character of the Mosaic code, he not only charges 
 this code with the crime of neglecting to legislate for ethics, 
 but, by a deplorable confusion of ideas, he substitutes ethics 
 and intention or desire for the Law and the overt act, giving 
 them the gravity and even the penal obligation of the latter, 
 just as, on the other hand, he absolves the actual adulteress by a 
 mere word ; a double and grave abuse which Jesus' successors but 
 too well perpetuated 
 
 * Talmud Sanhed, f . 107. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 65 
 
 Tims (Mat. V, 21, 22) he says : " Ye have heard that it was said 
 by them of old time, thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill 
 shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto you tliat whosoever 
 is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- 
 ment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother Raca shall be punished by 
 the Council, bn ( whosoever shall say thou fool, shall be punished by hell- 
 Jirc" Before examining the injustice of this, let us see what it has 
 too much or too little. Causeless anger is forbidden; and should 
 provoked anger be not so too ? Pharisaical morality avoids well 
 this restriction that would allow every one to justify his anger by 
 forbidding all anger. But what is there too much in the sentence of 
 Jesus? Clearly a disregard of the most natural distinction (one 
 that Judaism never omits to make) between justice and charity, be- 
 tween the civil code and the ethics. Jesus will not have it. He sends 
 the passionate man to the judgment, just as he does the homicide in 
 the preceding verse. The man who says Raca to his brother, shall 
 be punished ly the Council. "Where is the code that would sanction 
 such enormities ? Where is the law that would prosecute anger or 
 cite to its bar him who should call any one a fool or empty -head 
 (Raca)? And is this the fault in the law of Moses? In truth, it 
 should be proved that it provided not against such dispositions. But 
 it is not alone the excess, but also the confusion of punishments for 
 which the verse is remarkable. Prison and liell are there thrown 
 pell-mell from a hand that seems in haste to punish, to refine on 
 the old Mosaic justice, rather than guided by prudence or justice. 
 For anger and the epithet raca, the civil courts; for the epithet fool, 
 hell-fire. What confusion, what a jumbling of religion and the 
 penal code, of demons and policemen, of hell and prison? And the 
 last jumble already marks the future and is the first step to the 
 auto-da-fes, to the dungeons of the Inquisition. In short, Jesus, as 
 far as sending to hell the man who calls his neighbor a fool is con- 
 cerned, is not mistaken as to jurisdiction. But having come to this, 
 what we should examine is, if Judaism, making the proper distinc- 
 tion between the civil code and the ethical, has anything to learn, 
 to envy in an ethics that wants, at any price, to be thought neic. 
 We think not. Doubtless the Mosaic code could not legislate against 
 evils of a purely spiritual character. Moral derelictions are so well 
 condemned by the examples of our great men, by general precepts 
 to love, charity, justice, &c., that one could not accept or love the 
 Bible without hating all kinds of vice or passion. But we should 
 seek in vain for special condemnations of them ; for the Pentateuch is, 
 as we have said, but (chiefly) a civil code, while ethics is the concern 
 of tradition and the doctors. And is this last, taken in its own proper 
 sphere, less pure and elevated than that of the Gospels ? Are moral 
 
66 JEWISH AND - CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 vices and faults less severely condemned there than in the Gospels ? 
 But there are none of those minutiae, of those refinements on ethics 
 wherein the Gospel affects pre-eminence, of which the types and ori- 
 gins may not be found in the old Pharisaical morality. Needless 
 to say that the term impious given to a man, is sufficient cause for 
 citation before the Council ;* that the mere lifting of one's hand 
 against another, without striking, is called impiety, and is punish- 
 able by the courts ;f that anger is, on one side, compared to suicide,^ 
 for, as says the Talmud, it is of the passionate man that the prophet 
 has said: " Depart from him who wounds himself by anger," and 
 that, on the other side, it is ranked with homicide (not always cog- 
 nizable by the Courts) , if it is carried so far as to make its object 
 blush, so that, as say the doctors, " the white and red alternate on 
 his face," even though the reproaches had reference to the guilt of 
 some great crime. But what is truly remarkable, and what wrests 
 from the hands of Christian ethics the scepter it has usurped, is 
 that, of all enormous crimes, the only ones that form an exception 
 to the great Jewish principle of non-eternity of punishment, are three 
 against morality, and the first two are the objects of these evangeli- 
 cal imprecations. "Though one were the greatest sinner in the 
 world," say the Pharisees, "hell cannot hold him forever ; all shall 
 one day see the light of Heaven and Paradise." Do you know who 
 shall never see it? He who calls his neighbor a bad name, he who 
 makes his neighbor blush by scandalous proposals, and the adulterer. 
 This is the ethics of those formulistic Pharisees, those adorers of 
 the letter, of those heartless men whom the Gospel paints for us. 
 This is the mould from which the Gospel ethics copied the raca, the 
 fool, sent by it to the galleys or hell's-fire. Is this all ? No ; 
 Pharisaical ethics is so refined, so delicate, has such exquisite shades 
 that no rival whatever could be found for it. "Better that a man 
 throw himself into a burning furnace than make his fellow-man 
 blush before the world. "|| And who is the author of this saying ? 
 He who is the best representative of the school from which Chris- 
 tianity, as we have reiterated, has drawn its dogmas and ethics 
 Babbi Simeon Ben Jochai. " Whosoever shall make his brother 
 blush, shall himself blush when the angels repel him from the man- 
 sion of the Most High.H"" The most precious benediction which 
 the Pharisees gave their disciples was : " God be thanked that thou 
 never hadst reason to blush or madest another do so."** And an 
 old rabbinical text, says: "He who profanes holy things, who 
 despises solemnities, who annuls the covenant of Abraham, our 
 
 * Talmud, t Ibid, t Talmud and Zohar,flct. Tetzave. Talmud, Baba, Metzia, f. 58. 
 
 N Ib., Sota^ol. 10. <U Massecbet, Kalla. ** Moed Eatan, f. 9. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 67 
 
 father, who gives a false sense to the law, wlw makes his neighbor 
 blush (literally, grow pale) in public, shall have no part in the world 
 to come. Not from Jesus but from the Pharisees comes this. 
 
 There are several other points in which Jesus attempts to estab- 
 lish the superiority of his code to the old. Though our preceding 
 remarks are no less applicable to the whole tenor of his teaching, 
 we shall not examine the latter at this moment, as not bearing 
 directly upon charity. The laws of divorce, oaths, and retaliation 
 must then wait their turn; but we would now compare the ideas of 
 the old law with those of the new respecting the love of one's neigh- 
 bor. 
 
 We would first ask, why does Jesus taking the second part of 
 the Decalogue in his comparisons as to homicide, adultery, false 
 swearing omit to mention theft, commercial deceit ? In this case, 
 as he has done in the others, he could have refined upon the legal 
 enactments of the Pentateuch, and gained the easy victory that 
 even the poorest moralist can, over the dry prescriptions of the 
 civil and criminal code. Perhaps he saw tradition lifting itself 
 with full force to supply amply the needs of the strict Mosaic law. 
 However that be, we ought to show the reader the wonderful 
 expansion, or rather fecundation effected by tradition upon the 
 law of Moses. We must see what those dry, bare formulas, steal 
 not, cJieat not, become under the breath of tradition, as we have had 
 a specimen in the two commandments thou shalt not kill, and 
 thou shalt not commit adultery. 
 
 In the eye of tradition, he who gains the public favor by feigned 
 virtue, by imposture, is a thief. To press your hospitality on any 
 one without seriously meaning to give it, to make great offers, 
 knowing that they will not be accepted, is always, as the ancient 
 Tossifta declares, to steal in some fashion. Would it be more 
 excusable, perchance, in the sight of the Eternal ? Error to think 
 so. " Whosoever steals the esteem, the good opinion of his crea- 
 tures, steals the esteem of the Most High ;" to take advantage of 
 an ambiguity, to get a credit one does not deserve, is just simply to 
 steal. " If thou hast a torn garment, take care not to head a funeral 
 procession; for it may be thought you share in the grief of relatives 
 and friends ; it would be to steal both from the living and the 
 dead." (Moed Kathan, 26) . Shouldst thou leave the town to take 
 the air, take care not to accept the thanks of any visiting friend 
 who supposes that thou wast going to meet him. Otherwise thou 
 wilt be far from following the example of Rab Safra, who, in such 
 a case, hastened to undeceive his friend by telling him that he knew 
 not at all of his arrival. Dost thou think that this strict sincerity is 
 
68 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 imposed on thee with reference to thy co-religionists only? The 
 Pharisee, Samuel, the physician of Juda the Holy, the friend of 
 Plotinus, is at hand to undeceive thee. He requires the greatest 
 sincerity in our dealings with all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, 
 and he is the first to. illustrate personally that we cannot, without 
 sin, act otherwise; as witness the anecdote wherein Samuel re- 
 proaches his servant for having offered a boatman a mixture of 
 wine and water, as pure wine. So much as to theft. 
 
 And as to deceit to take advantage of your brother's mean or 
 Pagan origin, of his dishonorable past, or unfortunate present, to 
 say to him, remember your past life, your ancestors ; your mouth 
 that now utters the truth and the praise of the Everlasting, was 
 formerly polluted with blood, strangled meats, impure food ; your 
 sufferings are but the just punishment of your former faults. "And 
 which of the two is worse?" asks the great doctor of the Cabalistic 
 school, R. Simeon Ben Jochai. " It is the former who is a hundred 
 times more guilty. For does he not attack a man's honor, a thou- 
 sand times more precious than money ? Is it not a far more irrep- 
 arable loss than the most flagrant fraud, which may at any time be 
 repaired with money." 
 
 This sincerity, this perfect magnanimity, were so well rooted in 
 .the Jewish heart, that all the splendor of the tiara could not dazzle 
 them, when that tiara was stained by such baseness as the foregoing. 
 Thus the memory of a Pontiff, whose generosity equaled not his 
 dignity, remained forever disgraced in Israel. He had just per- 
 formed the majestic .ceremonies of the Day of Atonement. Fol- 
 lowed by the crowd, he was almost borne in triumph to their abode. 
 Suddenly the crowd opened to let two men in foreign dress and of 
 strange tongue, pass ; they were proselytes ! Scheinaia and Abtal- 
 ion, two masters venerated in Israel, the teachers of Hillel and 
 Schammai. The indiscreet and proud Pontiff thus addressed them: 
 Let the sons of the Gentiles come in peace. "Yes," replied the doctors, 
 lowering their eyes, " let the sons of the Gentiles come in peace if 
 they do the works of Aaron ; but let not the sons of Aaron come 
 in peace, if they have not also his virtues and his works."* And 
 Israel has ever repeated : Let the sons of the Gentiles come in 
 peace, if they practice the virtues of Aaron. 
 
 "We see that the most indirect offence to Charity is most severely 
 condemned by the Hebrew ethics. But is Charity itself there ? 
 There seems a doubt about the matter, so accustomed* are people 
 to make the terms Christianity and Charity synonymous. We re- 
 peat that there are subline traits of character in the Gospels. But 
 
 * Talmud, Yoma, f. 71. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 69 
 
 is this to say that it is there as -a new precept, as, to our great aston- 
 ishment, the Gospel declares ? It is perhaps unjust to say so even 
 respecting Paganism ; but it is absurd as regards Hebraism. In 
 vain would Christianity lift itself into the regions of an almost mys- 
 tical morality ; it is on the wings of Hebraism that it soars to these 
 heights. In vain does it assert " God is Charity," this sublime 
 saying that deeply stirred the whole Pagan world lapped in sensu- 
 ality it got this from Judaism. " God is Charity, God is Love," 
 says the Cabala, and also the Midrasch. And what have the doc- 
 tors made of the Mosaic precept, "Love thy neighbor as thyself?" 
 They have made it the great principle of the law, according to 
 Akiba, or, according to Hillel, that, of which the wJiole law is but the 
 commentary. They have changed the concluding words of the 
 verse, / am the E'ernal, into an oath of righteous justice against all 
 who practiced not this precept. They have given Charity this com- 
 prehensive appellation, GJiemilouth hassadim. Now, at what do 
 they hold this ? Xo ideas more noble could be entertained. It is, 
 with Doctrine and Religion, one of the three pillars of tlie Universe. It 
 is the beginning, middle, and end of the laic ; for this last shows us at 
 its commencement God giving man a companion; secondly, God 
 visiting Abraham ; and, finally, still God appointing a tomb for 
 Moses. Without this, science, faith, worship, will never make 
 aught but a man without God, without that God of truth of 
 whom it is written : "Israel shall remain many days without the 
 God of truth."* (Hence he practice of truth spoken of by the Gos- 
 pels. ) Without this, possess what virtues he may, a man can be 
 at best but badly righteous; he alone being perfect who is good 
 towards both God and men, while the other is so only towards the 
 Lord. On the other hand, with Charity, all other virtues go ; for 
 Eabban Johanan Ben Zaccai having challenged all his disciples to 
 say which virtue they thought the greatest, and Eleazar having 
 said that it was a good heart, the master said : / think the judgment 
 of Eleazar better than yours, for all yours are contained in his.j Had 
 Sodom and its sisters this, they would have found mercy at the bar 
 of the Eternal, idolatrous and corrupt though they were had only 
 the incense of a little Charity perfumed the cankness of their vices. 
 Thanks to this, Micha, the idolatrous Jew, was tolerated a long time, 
 though the angels accused him before God, saying: "See Lord, 
 the smoke from thy altars mingles with that of the offerings to 
 Micha's id!tl ! " And God replied, " Leave him in peace ; his bread 
 is offered to poor travelers. "J This is more than all the sacrifices 
 in the world ; more than holocaust or sin-offering ; and consoles us 
 
 * Aboda Zara, from 10 Chron. xv. 3. t Abotfc, Chap. 2. I Talmud, tr. Saahedr, 103. 
 
70 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 in exile for the overthrow of temple and altar. It did so for an eye 
 
 witness of his country's fall ! Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai was walk- 
 ing one day through the streets of Jerusalem, and Rabbi Jehoschoua 
 followed him. All at once they came upon the ruins of the temple. 
 Rabbi Jehoschoua sighing, said: " Woe to us! Who henceforth 
 shall atone for our sins?" "Be comforted, my son," said the 
 master, " we have still a substitute in Charity, for it is written, ' I 
 love Charity more than sacrifice.' " * And after the fall of the first 
 temple, did not Daniel, in Babylon, offer to God Charity, in place 
 of sacrifice, by rejocing at the weddings of the poor, by burying 
 the dead, and giving alms ;f in short, by this is the true Israelite 
 recognized. Whoever possess the three following virtues are of 
 the lineage of our father Abraham ; who lack them, are not his 
 children ; his true children are compassionate, modest, and chari- 
 table. (Gomle chassodim.)f 
 
 Is this Charity alms ? We have seen how different it is from 
 this ; and in that difference lies not the least noble trait of Phari- 
 saical morality. Is it to be wondered at that primitive Christianity 
 should have made so much of it, putting Charity above all special 
 benevolence bf which it is the soul and spring ? Paul and Clement, 
 of Alexandria, have, they too, well said : "Works, even for a good 
 purpose, have no merit for salvation, except through Charity ; and 
 this is the measur e of their actual worth." But is not the Pharisai- 
 cal doctrine taught in express terms Not only is Charity carefully 
 distinguished from simple alms- giving, and from every other good 
 work, but it is declared far superior to all special benevolence, to 
 Tzedaka, for instance, which it surpasses, they add, in many re- 
 spects ; for the one has to do but with things exterior to man ; the 
 other, with man's whole nature, body and soul ; the one serves the 
 living only ; the other, the dead as well ; the one concerns itself for 
 the poor only ; the other, for the rich also ; for with them, too, 
 Charity finds wounds to heal, tears to dry, griefs to ease.f And 
 more : alms-giving itself is rewarded only so far as it is transfused 
 by Charity ; for it is written, " Sow alms, and you can reap onjy 
 according to Charity.'" (Hos. x, 12). And if he who gives his mite 
 to the poor deserves six blessings, he who soothes an affliction, who 
 gives not his bread but, (as the Doctors finely comment on the 
 text) his soul, the latter shall have the eleven blessings named by 
 the prophet Isaiah. 
 
 This Charity, that doubtless found with the Pharisees its widest 
 application, may be understood as having limits, as applying 
 
 * Maghen aboth, from Talmud^tr. Soucca, 49. fTalmud Yebomath, 79. 
 
 t Massecfcet Kala. g Baba Bator*. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 71] 
 
 to friends only, as excluding enemies, whether personal, religions, 
 or political. Does Jewish Charity recognize this distinction? 
 A delicate question as between Judaism and Christianity ! Not 
 observing the capital distinction between the Jewish State and 
 the Jewish faith, but taking Hebraism as a homogeneous whole, 
 some consider Hebrew Charity quite equal to the Christian, and 
 some, far inferior. But, by observing the distinction, we can see 
 wherein Hebrew Charit y is similar to, diverse from, or superior to 
 the other. 
 
 As regards the personal enemy, we must reserve for that a special 
 consideration. What does Judaism teach as to the remaining two ? 
 By this classification we can better appreciate the merit Christian- 
 ity decrees itself, and the airs it has put on from the evangelical 
 era to the present time , on the score of its unlimited Charity. With 
 respect to this comparison, Matthew (v, 43 and seq.) writes : " Ye 
 have heard, adds Jesus, that it was said : Thou shall love thy neigh- 
 bor and hate thine enemy ; but I siy unto you, love your enemies and 
 bless those who curse you" By the words, ye have heard, Jesus doubt- 
 less refers to the Law of Moses. There is not, I dare say, one of 
 the precepts named in this chapter, upon which an improvement is 
 pretended, that does not belong to the Mosaic code. We are forced, 
 then, to refer verse 43 to the Mosaic code, and must, for other rea- 
 sons, consider it a textual citation from the Law, its form being 
 different from the style of Jesus, whenever the tradition of men clashes 
 (as he thinks) with the icord of God. This being established, it is not 
 easy to detect the origin and true meaning of this imputation, so 
 expressly does it seem forged to give the new law pre-eminence, and 
 so little root does it appear to have in either the text or spirit of the 
 Scriptures. What first strikes us is, that while the preceding citations 
 from the Pentateuch, in this chapter, are almost literal extracts from 
 the text, in vain shall we search the whole five books to discover 
 any verse that tallies, in either the letter or spirit, with that given 
 us by Jesus. In Leviticus, indeed, we have the first half of the 
 verse, Thou shalt love thy neighbor ; but where, in the name of won- 
 de ; r, shall we find the other half, thou shalt hate thine enemy ? Can 
 we doubt that Jesus has assigned to Hebrew Charity the limits that 
 his imagination only and his prejudices suggested ? That he has 
 brought false, not to say malicious, suit against it ? Before exam- 
 ining whether there be anything in the spirit of the Mosaic code to 
 warrant this charge, let us turn to another Gospel text, which may 
 throw light on our subject. 
 
 A Doctor of the Law, as Luke says (x, 25 and seq.), came to 
 Jesus, and, in Pharisaical fashion, of which examples abound in the 
 Talmud, asked him, Master, what must I do to gain eternal life ? To 
 
72 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 Jesus replied: " "What is written in the Law? " and he said, 
 Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, &c., . . and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self. To which Jesus replied, "Thou hast answered well ; do this 
 and thou shalt live." But, wishing to justify himself, the Doctor 
 asks furthermore : "And who is my neighbor ? " To which Jesus 
 replies, " A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," &c. 
 Nothing improbable in the Doctor's question, whether he asked it 
 for the sake of instruction, or, as is more likely, to test Jesus. But 
 scarcely have we taken the first step, when the probability of the 
 occurrence diminishes and we cannot but suspect that we have to 
 do merely with a dramatic scene, drawn by an awkward hand, for 
 the purpose of displaying the superiority of Christian to Jewish 
 ethics. The whole character of this narrative from Luke, and 
 the passage from Matthew, lead us to the conclusion that Hebrew 
 Charity stopped at a fixed point, the enemy, whether we understand 
 this word in a general sense or in the special one intimated by the 
 Samaritan of the Gospel parable. 
 
 But who, according to the Gospel itself, is this enemy ? It is 
 first, the personal enemy. Can we doubt it. The antitheses of 
 neighbor and enemy, in Matthew (v, 43) , of phrases such as these, 
 Do good to those who hate you ; pray for those who persecute you ; for 
 if you love only those who love you, &c. and the conclusion drawn 
 from the parable of the Samaritan, all show that it is the personal 
 enemy whom we must hate according to Judaism and love according 
 to the Gospel. But the political enemy is no less clearly designated 
 by the Samaritan of the parable. This enemy too, then, we must 
 hate, according to one system, and love according to the other. 
 But is this the actual teaching of Judaism ? Are we to take this 
 gross caricature for the true portrait of Hebrew ethics ? Omitting, 
 for the moment, what regards the personal enemy, our task is very 
 simple here. We shall ask ourselves if the love of one's neighbor, 
 commanded by the law of Moses, allows us to exclude the stranger, 
 the non-Israelite ; or if, indeed, within the limits necessary to 
 political existence, the Charity of Israel knows no bounds, but, 
 like that of God himself, includes all mankind. 
 
 But let us first notice two points wherein Jewish Charity far 
 surpasses Christian. These are Country and Society. If Jesus 
 preaches love to all men, if Christianity plumes itself more than 
 does any religion, on its humanitarianism, it is at the expense of a 
 love no less sacred, that of country and society. Christianity 
 knows but one country, the world, or rather Heaven; and but one 
 society, spiritual society. One's country, its rights, its needs, the 
 limitations it sometimes sets to universal charity, as one right limits 
 
JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 73 
 
 another ; civil society, truly human, as including bodies and souls 
 muted, its special rights, its requirements, the relation between its 
 members, the laws governing these relations, &c. ; all these things 
 are ignored by Christianity. Does Christianity recognize the polit- 
 ical enemy? No. Does it, a social justice? Nor yet this. Now, 
 without a political enemy, there can be no country ; without social 
 penalties, no society, no justice. A striking example of charity 
 supplanting the rights of justice, is the pardon of the adulteress 
 under the pretext that there was no one who, as being guiltless, 
 could stone her ; and it is precisely upon the ruins of both the 
 political and the social necessities that Christianity is based by 
 snapping the ties that bind man to earth, it takes its flight to 
 spheres where man cannot follow. We shall not, just now, dilate 
 on the menstruum Christianity proves for a social organization. 
 We shall but consider it in its political tendency. While Judaism 
 never omits any of the lower steps that lead to universal charity, 
 but lets the individual, the family, the city, the country, each play 
 its proper part, Christianity leaps over all these, burying them in 
 the abstract gulph it calls the world, humanity, or the Church. 
 
 Let it, then, be no longer asserted that Christianity has taught 
 men greater charity than Judaism. If it has effected this illusion, 
 it is by taking away from the individual, family, and, above all, 
 country, those rights which Judaism, with more equity had distrib- 
 uted to each class, to give them all to humanity, thereby losing in 
 intensity what it gained in extent. 
 
 This truth results not alone from many passages and the general 
 spirit of the Gospels, but it takes a special form in the parable of 
 the Samaritan. What a name ! And why has it not attracted the 
 attention of the savants ? They might have asked, why this partic- 
 ular choice ; why not select rather a Gentile, a Greek, a Roman 
 names much better calculated to show off the superiority of the 
 Christian to the Jewish ethics ? If we ask this question perhaps 
 we shall obtain a glimpse of the object of the parable, of the ties 
 it wishes to sever for the benefit of the Church, of that central stay it 
 would to efface from the bosom of mankind ; perhaps we shall find 
 the final word as to this parable, the abolition of country. Yes, we 
 ask, why a Samaritan ? Is it that Jesus, far from troubling himself 
 yet about his scheme for all humanity, far from extending his views 
 beyond Palestine, sought only to establish in the very heart of his 
 country, equality of all races, of all nations, to stifle the country, 
 so to speak, upon its bed of suffering. Did he also share the detes- 
 tation of his co-patriots, for the tyranny and cruelty of the Gentiles ? 
 
 We see but one motive in this choice of the Samaritan, viz : to 
 personify in him the political enemy, and him only. And truly, if 
 
74 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 there ever sprang from the bosom of Judaism an implacable politi- 
 cal enemy it was the Samaritan. No more fit emblem of this could 
 Jesus have selected. For why does he not choose the idolater, the 
 faithless Israelite, the Roman, at once a religious and political 
 enemy ? He wishes to confine himself to the pure political enemy, 
 monotheistic in his creed, no less than the Israelite. Can we doubt 
 the political object Jesus had in view? the suppression of the 
 spirit of nationality, of the interests and needs of patriotism. 
 
 This is not all. Is it the simple idea of duty which Jesus sub- 
 stitutes for this ? Does he show us a Samaritan suffering on the 
 highway, neglected, abandoned by a priest, a Levite, and succored 
 by a Pagan or a simple Israelite who knew his duty as to charity 
 better than those of the national hierarchy ? 
 
 Such an exhibition could mean only that charity and help should 
 be extended to all the unfortunate, be they Samaritans, Jews, or 
 Pagans, and Judaism could have naught to gainsay. But this is 
 not what Jesus presents to us. It is not virtue, duty, absolute 
 charity, that he substitutes for national egotism; it is another ego- 
 tism, personal egotism, the self-love, taken as a rule of conduct in 
 our dealings with others, that he puts in place of the far nobler love 
 of country. For, in this parable, it is a suffering Israelite whom 
 he presents to Israelites, neglected by his own people, and tenderly 
 cared for by a Samaritan. And after having traced a picture, 
 wherein any one of his hearers might at any time play the chief 
 part, after having touched the most sensitive chords of egotism, 
 of personal preservation; after having shown in the .political enemy 
 a personal friend, and created this perilous variance and artificial 
 perplexity, not based on truth, but which might easily escape the 
 notice of his inexperienced audience he presses the conclusion : 
 Which of those three is thy neighbor ? And the anti-political ob- 
 ject of Jesus is so much his concern, that the great danger in which 
 he places his own ethics, escapes his notice. In his impatience to 
 give the Samaritan the title neighbor, he takes it away from the 
 Israelite; in his haste to put egotism under obligation to the ben- 
 efactor, he forgets to curb it towards the enemy ; he forgets that 
 love of one's enemy, the cherished theme of another antagonism 
 which he raises between the old law and the new. For if the 
 Samaritan is my neighbor solely on account of his services, the 
 priests and the levites, though they have done me no positive 
 injury, cannot get this title, as they refused me what the Samaritan 
 lavishly bestowed. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 75 1 
 
 CHAPTER V3I. 
 
 CliAJRITY. 
 
 QTXAXJTTSS OF THE USTVEBSAL CHABITY OP JUDAISM. NOT TO BE FOTOD in CHRISTIAN 
 CHABITT. UNITY OF MAN'S ORIGIN. THE WOBTH AND RESULTS OF THIS DOCTBIN* 
 W THE TEACHINGS OF THE PH VBISEES. MAN M VDE AFTEB GOD'S IMAGE ; VALUE or 
 THE DOCTBINE. UNITY OF DESTIXY. MOSES AND SOPHONIAS. HISTOBT OF THI 
 PBIJOTIVE AGES. HUMANITABIAN CHAKACTEB OF THE PBOPHECIES ; CAN BE TKACED 
 IK THE LAWS. JUSTICE AND CHABITT EQUAL FOB ALL. UNTVEBSAL CHABITT OF THB 
 PHAKISEES. CIBCUMSTANCES THAT ENHANCE ITS VALUE. SALVATION TO ALL MEN. 
 IDEA OF MAN. HUMANITABIAN IDEAS OF THE PHABISEES. GENTILE GBEATNEM 
 KQUAL TO THAT OF THE HIGH PBEEST. TJNTVEXSAL LOVE, RESPECT JOB LlFX, 
 PBOPEBTT, AND EEPUTATION RESTBICTIOHS. POLITICAL ENEJCT . CHBIST HAI 
 CBEATED THE RELIGIOUS ENEMY. 
 
 If Christianity has sacrificed all for universal charity, has it, at 
 least, succeeded in giving us the incomparable ideal for -which it is 
 credited ? Has it transcended in this respect the teachings of Ju- 
 daism, that have, withal, not infringed on the places and rights of 
 country and society ? We dare assert that, in spite of the enormous 
 sacrifices it has made, it gives us an idea of universal charity far less 
 grand than that bequeathed us by Judaism. And we may risk the 
 assertion that the latter, by preserving the rights of country and 
 society, has made charity more active (if possible) , more tender, 
 more humane, and in short, more charitable. Christianity sees in 
 man but man in the abstract, or even at most but the Christian. 
 But what does the Hebrew not see in him ! Man, his brother, cre- 
 ated like himself in the image of God,* the worshiper of the same 
 God, though he be not a disciple of Moses, a father, brother, son; 
 a member, in short, of a fam ily, and above all one that has a coun- 
 try, a nationality; and as the Jew himself is also a citizen, one of 
 a nation, he can sympathize with the affections appertaining to citi' 
 zenship and nationality, with the joys and sorrows, virtues and he- 
 roisms these relations beget. In a word, Judaism presents a new 
 point of contact for men ; by multiplying relations, it doubles, 
 triples universal charity ; and, instead of the dry abstraction, man, 
 that Christianity would have us love, it gives its adherents some* 
 thing more real, more alive and similar to ourselves something 
 with affections and wants like our own a father, a citizen, a pat- 
 riot. 
 
 But leaving these restricted considerations of man's character, 
 should Judaism envy Christian ethics ? We need but call to mind 
 one important doctrine, one that is more peculiar to Judaism than 
 
76 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 to any religion or to any nation, one that is the essential base of| 
 universal charity, and without which no philosophy can ever sue-' 
 ceed in transfusing man's heart with that tender brotherly love, 
 which is its direct consequence and that is UNITY of ORIGIN. Let 
 us remember that long before liberty and equality were spoken of, 
 Israelitic tradition showed how eminently favorable was this great 
 doctrine to these two principles among men. "Why," say in the 
 Talmud, these much-misunderstood Pharisees, "has man got but 
 one origin ? It is first, that no one may say to another, ' my father 
 is greater than thine ;'* and secondly, that no people or family may, 
 with justification, put another in subjection." Alas! how many 
 such tyrannies have we not in the world ! How would it be if each 
 people and race had a separate origin? But mankind from the same 
 parents, how shall that be ? And their children all similar in ap- 
 pearance ? A grand thought, and one that Genesis, of all books 
 esteemed by men, alone contains. 
 
 Man has been created in ike image of God ; he is the king of cre- 
 ation ; all ought obey him, that he may ennoble and spiritualize all, 
 by leaving on them traces of the mould from which he himself was 
 struck. Is this representation an exaggeration on our part, or is it 
 truly according to the meaning of the strict Mosaic text ? These 
 inimitable doctrines are like the sun, the sky, and other wonders of 
 creation ever before us, ever familiar to us, and therefore scarce 
 any longer objects of our admiration otherwise the august ideas 
 that Judaism expresses would forever call forth our unqualified 
 wonder and respect. 
 
 There are, however, two important considerations which cannot 
 but enhance the value of these doctrines. The one is the time, the 
 atmosphere wherein they were enunciated ; the other, the people 
 to whom they were addressed, and the end sought in diffusing 
 them. Truth herself must indeed have inspired the Hebrew law- 
 giver, if, in the midst of a people who accounted all close to their 
 frontiers as enemies and barbarians, he was bold enough to pro- 
 claim a doctrine that went in the very teeth of that exclusionism in 
 which each nation had entrenched itself. And this people, what 
 was its character ? Here it is that the humanitarian side of Israel's 
 existence shines forth. We can easily comprehend that Moses 
 might communicate his great ideas respecting the unity of our 
 origin, the grandeur of man and of his destiny, to some tried disci- 
 ple, to a school, or, better still, to missionaries who would force 
 them on the attention of an ignorant world. Now had this Jewish 
 people whom he was about to mould, anything of this character ? 
 Was it not, in its turn, about to become -one of the nations of the 
 
 * Talmud, Sanhedrim, 38. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHIC^' 4 ^ ^ 
 
 VfH rT4?/ 
 
 East, to have a distinct existence, and interests and rights to defend 
 from the constant inroads of its neighbors ? Had it not yet to pass 
 through many ages before it could practice the great principles 
 taught it by Moses, or even suspect the fine fruit they could bear r 
 Unquestionably, this universal fraternity, this unity of origin, found 
 on the front of Genesis, have no visible connection with the imme- 
 diate future of Judaism, and seem to be but dim reminiscences of 
 Paradise existing in the midst of the bloody strifes of national 
 egotisms ; or, to speak with more precision, it appears evidently like 
 a coupling-stone to which the non-political side of Mosaism, the 
 religious and moral one, held as to one of its chief stays. But 
 there is another unity which Judaism taught later to men; that is, 
 the unity of future. It is the necessary supplement to unity of origin, 
 destined to be one day the final terminus of this latter. At the be- 
 ginning of history, the unity of Moses, the unity of the past ; at 
 its end, the unity of Sophonias, the unity of the future. The first 
 is natural unity, the foundation of the other ; the second is free 
 moral unity, a unity of love, faith, thought, the result at once 
 and the crown of the former. Moses is the prophet of the first, of 
 man one ; Zephaniah (Sophonias) of humanity one, of the collective 
 Adam ; and he gives, in the spirit of Moses, the justest formula of 
 this doctrine, saying : At that time I shall make the lips of people pure 
 lips, that they may all call on the name of the Eternal, and worship him 
 with one spirit. (Zep. iii. 9.) Is this idea that the Jews were to 
 form of man's origin and of universal fraternity, borne out by the 
 history of the first ages narrated to them by Moses ? 
 
 It would be unjust to deny that Judaism alone, of all ancient 
 creeds, has given men the history of their origin, of the first ages, 
 and of the various subdivisions of mankind. And besides laying 
 the first stone of that great ethnological structure which has been 
 so expanded in our days, it has revealed, by this very service, its 
 great moral and humanitarian side, and the destiny of this book 
 become universal. 
 
 But is not the God whom Moses announces, the God of all men ? 
 Are not his justice and care dispensed equally to all ? Does he not, 
 in the Mosaic history, interpose continually, avenging fratricide, 
 drowning a corrupt generation, giving Noah laws, directions, which, 
 far from being confined to that people to be formed by Moses, are 
 the inheritance of all mankind. 
 
 Is it not "with all his posterity," that God declares to Noah, he 
 established his covenant? (Gen. ix. 9). Is the God of Abraham 
 a fetich, a local, national God, like other gods ? Or rather the God 
 of Jieaven and earth? (Gen. xiv. 22) . Does not the great patriarch 
 
78 JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 become his prophet and apostle? Does he not importune God on 
 behalf of those wicked people of the plains, with whom his family had 
 no affinity whatever? Does not God himself tell him of his intention 
 respecting these sinners ; because, according to the Doctors, it is 
 unworthy of God to punish the children without telling their father, 
 namely, Abraham, called by the same Pharisees, the father of all 
 nations ? * Is not Joseph made to utter language that reveals a 
 Providence ever directing the destiny of nations? "It is God," 
 says he, " who overruled your actions in order to save a great peo- 
 ple "f 
 
 And why are those Canaanites driven before Israel, from their 
 land ? It is here that the God of Moses reveals himself as the just 
 God, the God of all men, dealing to the Jew the same justice as to 
 the Canaanite a doctrine unheard of, incomprehensible, in those 
 early days, and which Judaism alone has made the world under- 
 stand. Take care, says Moses, that you be not guilty of the same 
 sins and corruptions as are those nations whom you are about to 
 drive out. For, deceive not yourselves, it is neither your virtue 
 nor equity of claim, that gives you the inheritance ; it is their ini- 
 quity on one side, and on another the oath that God swore to your 
 fathers. Moreover, said he, " if you imitate them the earth will 
 spew you out, as it did them." (Deut. ix. 5 ; Lev. xviii. 24 and 
 seq.) 
 
 Shall we speak of laws? They could not be more charitable, they 
 could not better unite the national existence and particular life of 
 Israel to a love and charity towards all men. Is it nothing that these 
 Gentiles were permitted like the holiest Israelites to offer sacrifices 
 on the altar of the Lord ? This is indeed why Moses solicits Pha- 
 raoh (Ex. x. 25) , this is what the Mosaic laws expressly provide for, 
 requiring the same perfection in the animals from the Pagans as in 
 those from the Israelites ; this is what Solomon nobly expresses, 
 when he supplicates God to hear the prayers of the Gentile and 
 stranger (Nochri) who should adore him in the temple he built. J 
 Shall we lightly esteem that peaceful sojourn in Palestine as- 
 sured to the Pagan, on the sole condition of his not worshiping 
 idols, and leaving him at full and complete liberty for aught else ; 
 a liberty that extends sometimes to idolatry (as say the Pharisees) , 
 as in the case^of the female captive who might publicly adore her 
 
 * Bereshith Eabba, Sect.49. 
 
 f According to Moses and the Prophets, all people are the children of God ; only Israel 
 is kia first born (Ex. IV. 22). See also, Is. XV. 5; Malachi I. 11; Jerem. X. 7; and all 
 throughout the Pealm*. 
 
JEWISH A**D-HBISTIAN ETHICS. 79 
 
 gods in Palestine.* And this may be clearly inferred from the text 
 (Lev. xxv. 39) where not only is the sojourn of the stranger antici- 
 pated, but his possible want, too, in a strange land, which, with 
 paternal solicitude, Israel is required to relieve ; as also to regard 
 "him as a proselyte (gher) , or merely (according to the Pharisees) 
 as the Pagan (toschab) who dwells in Palestine on the fore-men- 
 tioned condition ; and he is called by the tender name, thy brother, 
 (achikha) , better than neighbor. But this is not all. "Beware not 
 to take interest in any form, from him ; but fear God and act so 
 that thy brother can live with thee." We need scarcely say that if 
 this Pagan is a slave, the same legislation applies to him as to the 
 Jew : in the year of Jubilee he infallibly regains his liberty. But, 
 what appears incredible, this same Pagan, this breaker of the Sab- 
 bath, this public transgressor, can, with the full sanction of the 
 law, buy an Israelite and hold him as a slave until the Jubilee year. 
 And what is as extraordinary as certain, the law of Moses regulates 
 all these cases, as : An Israelite may be sold to an idolater and in 
 Palestine ; nay even to the idol itself, to its temple and worship ; 
 and tradition (the Pharisees) not only has no objection to make, 
 but authorizes this interpretation of the text, in itself very ob- 
 scure. To the Pharisees is indeed due this interpretation of Levit- 
 icus (xxv. 47) : The family of the proselyte is the idolater, the idol itself, 
 to be served, not by adoration or God-worship, but by cutting wood and 
 drawing water for its use. (Vide Sifra and Bacshi) . 
 
 We do not mention the remarkable details of these laws, the 
 exhortations given to the Jewish slave of the idolater, not to imi- 
 tate his master, not to say : " My master worships images; I shall 
 do likewise. My master breaks the Sabbath; so shall I " to do 
 so would lead us too far from our subject. 
 
 The laws protecting the stranger and full of lore and charity 
 towards him, are everywhere mentioned : Love the stranger as your- 
 selves (Kamokha) ; for you have been strangers in the land of Egypt, 
 for you know the mind of the stranger, his sufferings and humilia- 
 tions; words as noble as significant, for they make us see in this 
 stranger naught but a man, of a religion, morality, and origin 
 diverse from those of the Israelites, just as were the latter from 
 those of the Egyptians. Not to deceive, not to oppress him, not to 
 withhold unjustly his earnings, being in the same relation to us 
 absolutely as a brother. Admirable teaching of the Pharisees, and 
 of them only. Not to give him up to his master, not even to an 
 Israelite, if he has escaped from him in a strange land and seeks an 
 asylum with Israel : let him dwell with us and be free; let no Isra- 
 elite dare to trouble or to cheat him. All this again through the 
 
 * Talmud, Yabua., foL 43. 
 
80 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 Pharisees. Is not the needy stranger ranked with the poor, the 1 
 widows and orphans of Israel? Do they not invoke for him, too, 
 the benefit (better than charity) of a right which the law estab- 
 lishes for all, the tenth part, the corner of the field,- and the dropped 
 cars of corn ? 
 
 "We have seen the spirit, not only of the Mosaic law, bnt of the 
 Pharisaical interpretation these eternally persecuted Pharisees, 
 the objects of implacable hate and who, notwithstanding, with 
 impassive heart, with serene and immovable spirit, maintain all 
 that is visibly humanitarian in the Mosaic law, and by exhibiting it 
 under a new aspect, and revealing its many-sidedness, bring at last 
 Hebrew charity, human fraternity, into high relief. 
 
 Let us now see the Pharisees alone at work, free from all tram- 
 mels of interpretation, enunciating in the intimacy of instruction, 
 the most independent doctrines, whose publication among the Gen- 
 tiles, in our modern Europe, they could never have foreseen. 
 Well, these hypocritical Pharisees, of narrow views, ignoble ambi- 
 tion, without heart, enthusiasm, or genius, are not, as we shall see, 
 the Pharisees of history ; they are the Pharisees of the Gospel, or 
 rather (what has been best proven) the pseudo Pharisees, taxed, 
 by the true Pharisees, in their oldest books, with hypocrisy. Is it 
 at all wonderful that Jesus should have taught a just, liberal, and 
 generous ethics, and that, by degrees, the world should have en- 
 tered into the plan of the Gospel ? Was Christianity not naturally 
 driven by its failure even with the Jews, to break down the barrier 
 that hitherto separated it from the Gentiles, and to substitute for that 
 refractory Israel that rebel to the new faith, something, in good 
 sooth, less stubborn ? And, above all, had Christianity to con- 
 tend, like the Pharisees, against the perpetual revolts of the national 
 sentiment from the doctrine of love and charity towards all men ? 
 No ! To love the Greek, the Boman, or the barbarian, the Christ- 
 ian had not to stifle the. bitterest memories of old or recent wrongs ; 
 or to shut his eyes to the disgrace or enslavement of his country, 
 he, who found one wherever he went, at Jerusalem no less than at 
 Athens or Rome. Should a good thought, a noble doctrine then, 
 have the same value coming from the Christian as from the Jew ? 
 Assuredly not. If historical criticism is just, it must admit that 
 whenever Hebrew charity disengages itself from a thousand obsta- 
 cles, a thousand adverse sentiments, it rises spontaneously to those 
 hights where all men appear equal. For the doctrine itself is too 
 old, too rooted in the hearts of men to disown it, and men are too 
 loyal, too generous to do so. Is it nothing that these Pharisees in 
 the time of Caligula, Tiberias, and Nero, have seriously debated if 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 81, 
 
 the Pagan, keeping his religion, could be saved, provided he ac- 
 knowledged God and observed the moral laws? Is it nothing, 
 above all, that the affirmative doctrine prevailed in the synagogue 
 (conformable to the belief of all Israel to-day) , that Socrates, Plato, 
 and Marcus Aurelius, should have their places in Paradise by the 
 same title as Abraham, Isaac, or Moses? Is it naught that the Pa- 
 gan, the idolater, should be esteemed as neighbor, towards whom 
 fraud is strictly forbidden ; that one law prohibits the robbery of 
 Jew or Pagan ; that they have been so scrupulous as to forbid their 
 inoffensive methods of gaining the good will and esteem of the 
 idolater, to which, we already made allusion ; that they extended 
 the Mosaic prohibition of hating the Egyptian, to all the nations 
 who gave Israel an asylum, even while they persecuted him, and 
 this by reason of that fine maxim : " Throw no stone into the well 
 from which thou hast drawn" ; that they have exhorted us to suc- 
 cor the poor, to visit the sick, to bury the Pagan dead an example 
 followed by the primitive Christians? Who but the Pharisees 
 would have told us the Mosaic text being silent thereupon 
 that the seventy bulls sacrificed during the eight days of Taberna- 
 cles, were propitiatory offerings for the seventy nations supposed to 
 be on the earth ? The Pharisees alone discovered the motive, they 
 who applied to Israel the words of the Psalm : For my love they per- 
 secute me, and I pray for them ; adding : These are the seventy bulls 
 that were at that time sacrificed, so that the world should not lose one of 
 them ;* and who said : Oh! if the nations but knew how serviceable to 
 them is the house of God ! they would have fortified it all around that it 
 might not be touched.^ And who, moreover, comparing Israel to a 
 dove, give us an idea transcending anything in the Gospels : Thine 
 eyes resemble the dove's ; as the dove gives its neck to the slayer, so 
 does Israel ; as the dove is made a sin-offering, so Israel atones for the 
 sins of the nations, giving the seventy bulls sacrificed during Tabernacles 
 as an atonoment for the Gentiles. J And what a noble sentiment is 
 couched in these words : Man, created in God's image, how loved is 
 he by him I That love shown him, to be created in that image.% And 
 think not their thought extends but to the Israelite ; to him the 
 Talmud immediately after gives a special dignity in the title, Son. 
 And is the perfection obtained by the study and practice of the 
 divine law, promised to the Jews only? Not so ! These are the pre- 
 cepts, said Moses, whose practice gives life to man. Does the text, ask 
 the Pharisees, say tliat the priest, the Levite, the Israelite shall live by 
 the law f No ! it says MAN, that is the Gentile himself. Without being 
 a convert to Judaism, without even troubling himself about the 
 
 * Yalkout, page 251. t Midrasth, Rabba, Sect. Em*r and Pmcfca*. 
 
 I Midraath Schir h^^M^m. Talmud, tr. Abotfc. Chap. in. 
 
82 JEWISH AND CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 Mosaic law, provided he studies and practises natural morality, he 
 may equal in dignity the high priest of Judaism. We may boldly 
 say that they never omit an opportunity of illustrating the univer- 
 sality and eminent humanitarianism of their ethics, at the risk even 
 of compromising the election of Israel, his rights or national pre- 
 judices.* Could more be required of the highest spirit ? Not in 
 vain did David say : " This is the law for man, Eternal ! " (II. 
 Sam. vii. 19) . The Pharisees seize the sentence, force from it all 
 its consequences, even those that perhaps its author did not intend. 
 Law of man, they say, and not of priest, Levite, or Jew. Isaiah (xxvi. 
 2) says : "Open the doors, and let good men enter, them who up- 
 hold thir faith." And the Pharisees, commenting on the word goy, 
 (nation) say that the reference is not to Jews merely, but to man in 
 general, let the creed or nationality be what it may. " O ye just, 
 praise the Lord," says David (Ps. xxxiii. 1). To this, also, the 
 Pharisees give the same wide interpretation, asserting that the term 
 tzaddikim (the Just) takes in all mankind. And in the 125th Psalm 
 (ver. 5) we read : "O Eternal, heap thy blessings on the just, them 
 who have a good heart ! " Another occasion for the Pharisees: The 
 Just ! the Just in general. But this is not all ; the Tanna debe 
 Eliahou advances a step: I call heaven and earth to witness ! Manor 
 woman, freeman or slave, Jew or Pagan, according to their works alone 
 shall the holy spirit come to them. They point to Aaron as a model, 
 inviting us to have his love towards men and to lead them to the 
 Law. To hate them would be to give up life. Love for humanity 
 knows no restrictions ; we should love idolators even. And who say 
 so ? The Ccbalists. 
 
 This love should not be sterile. The austere Schammai himself 
 bends to the great Judaic truth and teaches: Study the Law, and wel- 
 come all men with respect. And according to B. Ismael we should 
 welcome them with joy. And how solicitous are they respecting a 
 man's honor ! " Let thy neighbor's honor be as dear to thee as is 
 thine own"f " Despise no one."! B. Mathia Ben Harasch and B. 
 Johanan, two ancient doctors, boasted that they had never waited 
 for another's salutation, were it an idolater's even. And elsewhere : . 
 Who is truly honorable ? He who honors his fellow-creatures. As to 
 property: Let the property of thy fellow-man be for thee as sacred as 
 thine own. " Shouldst thou find thine enemy's ox or ass strayed," said 
 Moses, "thou shalt bring it him;" and that, says B. Yoschia, though 
 
 * And. indeed, we see in our day the effects of this too-catholic spirit (so to speak), in 
 the facility with which many modern Jews ignore nearly all the restraints and wholesom* 
 precepts of their faith as inconsistent with the liberal thought and action that faith 
 ever beget8.-*[2V<MW. 
 
 t Abcth, Chap, 2. Uboth, Chap. 4. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 83 
 
 he be a pagan or idolater. If the civil law allows usury from the 
 Gentiles, the moral law, through the Pharisees, forbids it : and one 
 of them, a witness, doubtless, if not a victim of pagan cruelties, after 
 seeing at the circus the massacre of his brethren, entered the Bet 
 hamidrasch and taught : Thou shalt not lend on usury even to a 
 stranger* 
 
 Does this, However, mean that Judaism knows no one as enemy 
 and never felt hate? No! and we do not blush to say so, We 
 should not sacrifice the truth, say the Pharisees, even on the altar 
 of the Lord, for the language and memorable examples of the pro- 
 phets prove but one thing, that God hates, above all, hypocrisy. 
 Yes, the Jew has, or (to speak more accurately) had an enemy, the 
 political one. The Jew, who loved dearly his country, was the 
 natural enemy of all who conspired against it. For such, no truce, 
 no peace, no pardon, as long as there was danger. Against these 
 were the exceptional measures, the martial laws, the terrible decrees, 
 of which we read in the law of Moses or in the books of the Kab- 
 bis, attesting one thing only, danger having but one object, 
 the public safety recognizing but one right, the right of defence. 
 A right not only lawful, but obligatory above all when it has refer- 
 ence to one's country. Easy for Christianity, that knows no country 
 or nationality to dispute a religious nation's, a sacerdotal kingdom's 
 right of existence and the consequences of that right; to be scan- 
 dalized whenever the preservation of Israel demands a restriction of 
 that limitless charity which is the final object of the restriction. Is- 
 rael, with erect head and calm heart, shall never blush for its polit- 
 ical character, given it by the God of Christians, nor for the exercise 
 of the rights appertaining thereto. But has Christianity itself no 
 enemies ? Here it is, that the deplorable consequences of the ab- 
 sence of a civil polity in that system, unfold themselves. We 
 have seen before that Christianity had to seat itself upon the empty 
 throne, and to transfer there all its religious character and aspira- 
 tions, and, as it had no political system, to risk the fatal blending 
 of the spiritual with the temporal of faith with law, of charity 
 with justice, of the interior court with the exterior, of remorse with 
 policemen, of hell with the scaffold of which its history, alas ! 
 gives us the painful spectacle. Well, we come to one of the worst 
 results of this confusion of things so different. Christianity, that 
 would not have a political enemy, was obliged to have as soon as 
 it encountered the world a religious enemy. 
 
 Yes, the religious enemy is a creation altogether-Christian, un- 
 known to Judaism, impossible even, the moment it admits that 
 
 * Talmud, Makkot, f . 24. 
 
84 JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 eternal salvation is not thq exclusive heritage of the Mosaic Law. 
 So this charity, that with the Jew is stopped only by the political 
 enemy, the Christian cannot entertain towards the religious enemy. 
 And let it not be said that this refers to posterior abuses and alter- 
 ations. The Gospel is there to attest that the genius of Christianity 
 is true to itself from the most remote times. Jesus, who knew so 
 well how to pray for his personal enemies, who would have the 
 Jew love the Samaritan, that is to say, the Pole to love the Cossack, 
 or the Italian, the Austrian soldier, Jesus has neither love nor 
 prayer for those not of his church. I pray not, he says, for the 
 world, but for those whom, thou hast given me (John xvii. 9) ; and else- 
 where, WJio is not for me is against me. The tree that bears not fruit 
 shall be cut down and cast into hell-fire. But where find darker col- 
 ors, more terrible words, than those he uses to predict the end of 
 the enemies of Christianity ? The Church had as yet no soldiers 
 or executioner at its beck, and that is why it has recourse to God, 
 but in what a style ! It is right that God should afflict those who af- 
 flict you, and that you should have respite when the Lord Jesus is re- 
 vealed from heaven . . . inflames of fire, taking vengeance upon those 
 who know not God and obey not the Gospel. It is because there is no 
 mean between obeying Jesus and being his enemy, that he himself 
 says : Do you think I am come to establish peace in the world ? No, but 
 war. Whosoever will not leave father, mother, brothers, to follow me, is 
 not worthy of me. Is this execrable end the only one Jesus has in 
 view, as think the detractors of Christianity ? Or does he simply 
 mean that war must be the inevitable result of variance of opinion 
 regarding his doctrine? Neither, although there is some truth in 
 the last opinion. He means this only, that his doctrine being exclu- 
 sive, his faith intolerant, there being no mean between Christians and 
 the damned, between partisans and enemies, as soon as the former de- 
 clared for him, they should regard all others as religious enemies, in 
 whom there is nothing to love but THE SOUL and its future conversion ; 
 and to attain this end, not to be too particular about the means. 
 
 Would we have an example of this difference between Judaism 
 and Christianity in the manner each views its relations to other 
 religions ? Paganism accused both at once of being the enemies of 
 tlie human race. How do they receive the accusation? On the one 
 side Tertullien, on the other, the Doctors of the Midrasch comment 
 in styles as singular as diverse. The former, although with pro- 
 scriptions and constant carnage before him, hesitates not to retort 
 upon his adversaries : Yes, we are your religious enemies. The Doc- 
 tors see in it but the hatred of Paganism towards them ; as to 
 theirs, they see it not, for they feel it not. Only, as this accusation 
 came from Borne, from its Court, its savans, its historians, the 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. #5 
 
 Doctors, who did not overlook Rome's intolerant oppression of the 
 world, or the terrible harvest of smotnered hate and revolt it was 
 everywhere reaping, took care, in a remarkable sarcasm, to make 
 Borne, too, a party : Y<is, say they, all the world hates Esau, ; all the 
 world hates Jacob. And do they think they deserve this hate ? They 
 cannot even understand it. They seek in vain what Israel has done, 
 to merit the scorn of the Gentiles ; they do not even suspect that 
 difference of faith has caused it, so remote from them in the idea of 
 a religious enemy. What tender and pathetic language is this scrap 
 from the Midrasch : They hated me unjustly, said David. If Esau 
 (Rome) hates Jacob, it is because tlie latter took j rom him his birthright; 
 but wliat has he done to the barbarians? To the Philistines? To the 
 Arabs ? Did not David say well : They hated me unjustly ? Here is 
 the whole spirit of Judaism. It hates not ; so it is astonished that 
 it should be hated, asking with wonder, not, Wliat is my creed ? (it 
 never thinks of that) but only What have I done f That is to say, 
 you cannot hate me but for my deeds, and I am innocent. In this 
 cry of Judaism is found all its complaints and tears for centuries. 
 The Pharisees have uttered it from the birth of Christianity, and 
 the persecutors of the Jewish faith still hear repeated in an uner- 
 ring simplicity : " Tell me what I have done 1 " 
 
 CHAPTER VHL 
 
 ElSTElVrrES. 
 
 MOSAIC PRECEPTS AND PHARISAICAL INTEBPBETATIONS. FosorvENEsa OP INJURIES. 
 
 MOSES, THE P3OPHETS, AJJD THE PHABISEES. REWABD OP PABDON. THE PABDON 
 
 OP GOD. DUTIES or THE INJURES ; THOSE OP THE INJURED. EXAMPLES or THE 
 PHARISEES. WHAT ENHANCES THEIB MJRAIJTY. 
 
 The restrictions to universal charity can refer to but three-classes, 
 viz : to the political, the personal, and the religious enemy. Since 
 it is denied that Judaism has universal charity, and since special 
 election, if not Jewish egotism, is spoken of, we have asked ourselves 
 at which of these three classes has Jewish charity perchance stop- 
 ped. As to the last, we have seen that it is an exotic, unknown to 
 Judaism; while of Christianity, on the contrary, it is the natural 
 product. 
 
 Aside from the political enemy, we have seen the stranger, the 
 non-Israelite, our brother, through Adam, ranked with the Israelite 
 himself, and loved in a degree unknown to ancient or modern 
 
oD JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 times. There remains, the^, only the personal enemy, and to this 
 we direct our attention. Is it true that Judaism does not enjoin 
 charity towards our personal enemies, or checks it on account of 
 some miserable interest, some blind antipathy or tyrannical passion ? 
 Is it true, in short, that forgiveness of injury, charity, and love 
 towards our enemies are the special traits of Christianity, and con- 
 stitute a new doctrine introduced by Jesus ? This is the apparent 
 inference from his words: (Mat. v. 43), "You have heard that it 
 was said in old times : Thou slidlt love thy neighbor, and hate thine 
 enemy." We have, it will be remembered, proved by the best argu- 
 ments that it is the Law of Moses itself which is here attacked, 
 and that it is the personal enemy alone to which the last words 
 refer; moreover, that no such precept as the last is to be found 
 either in the Law or the Kabbinical writings, but precepts far dif- 
 ferent in spirit from any such " hate." We have said enough as to 
 the stranger, and now let us see about the personal enemy. 
 
 Shall we say that Jesus forgot the most formal prescriptions of 
 the Mosaic law ? There are two passages where charity to one's 
 enemy is enjoined, and in both, the Mosaic precept, sufficiently 
 noble in itself, is ten times more exalted and refined through the 
 interpretation of the Pharisees. Singular destiny of their writ- 
 ings to rebut, at each step, the extraordinary imputations of the 
 Gospel ! I say extraordinary, unless they are made against those 
 false Pharisees, rebuked by the Talmud itself, as we have said. 
 " Hate not thy brother inwardly, but censure him for his error, and 
 thou shalt be blameless," says Moses. Would it be less strict in 
 practice ? " Take not vengeance, and bear no ill will towards thy 
 fellow-citizens, but love thy neighbor (who is created) like thyself : 
 I am the Everlasting." (Lev. xix. 17, 18). That is, no vengeance 
 on any one, as the last words of the precept show. If the Mosaic 
 language appear sometimes confined to the Jewish circle, it is, I 
 think, because no regular connections existed with those outside 
 it. But hear the Pharisees on this law of pardon. "What is 
 vengeance?" ask they : Lend my thy hook. No, I shall not lend it 
 thee, as thou didst refuse me thine the other day : here is revenge. 
 Lend me thy hook. Yes ; though thou didst refuse me thine the other day ; 
 here is ill will." What delicate sentiments, and not found in the 
 Mosaic text! Moses says elsewhere, " Shouldst thou see thine ene- 
 my's ox or ass strayed, return it him." . . " Shouldst thou see," say 
 the Pharisees, "thine enemy's ass bending under a burden and 
 withhold thine aid? No ; help to relieve his animal." What enemy 
 is here meant ? We have already seen ; although the Talmud 
 excludes the political enemy, the Mekhilta, a much older, more 
 venerable text, includes not only the political enemy, but the rem- 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 87 
 
 gade idolatrous Jew, the personal enemy. But how do the Pharisees 
 understand this precept as to charity ? A friend, they say, bends 
 under his burden, and at the same time an enemy asks your help 
 to load. What strong reasons for preferring to assist the friend! 
 And the Law tells us not what we should do ; but the Phar- 
 isees do, saying expressly that the enemy must first get our aid. 
 Are we not right in sayig that the Pharisees of history are 
 not those of the Gospel? But Moses does not confine the keep- 
 ing of his precepts to individuals he cites, as an example, a whole 
 nation generously pardoning one that had enslaved it for centuries; 
 as in the case of the Egyptians and Jews. And what does Moses 
 enjoin on the latter, just escaped from the yoke of Egypt ? Naught 
 but pardon and love to their most cruel foes. Forgetting, with ad- 
 mirable charity, the sanguinary laws that from time to time fell upon 
 his people, Moses sees in their sojourn in Egypt only that an asy- 
 lum was given to Israel air, water, and burial ground ; and yet 
 the waters were reddened with their blood, the air still rang with 
 their cries, the earth was bedewed with their tears. The words of 
 Moses : Thou shall not hate the Egyptian, for thou hast been a stranger 
 in his land, would be the bitterest irony, were they not the most re- 
 fined charity. Is this to hate one's enemies f So the prophets did 
 but follow the Mosaic spirit in urging the forgiveness of injury. 
 Did not Solomon say, (Pro. xxiv. 17, 18) : " If thou seest thine 
 enemy fall or err, rejoice not, lest the Eternal see it, condemn thee, 
 and bring all the evil on thy head." "The reasonable mania 
 noble, he glories in pardoning injury. (Prov. xix. 11.") And 
 elsewhere (Ib. xvii. 5) "He who rejoiceth at another's misfor- 
 tune shall himself receive no pardon." " Do not say, ' I shall pay 
 evil with evil;' trust in God and he will assist thee: nor, 'As he has 
 done to- me, so shall I to him ; I shall pay him according to his 
 deeds (Prov. xx. 22; xxiv. 29) / " Did not his father David say (Ps. 
 vii. 5, 6) , "O God, have I paid evil with evil ? . . . Let mine enemy 
 persecute, strike, trample me under foot, and sink my glory for 
 ever ! " Was Paul the first to say what we read in the Epistle to 
 the Romans (xii. 20) : " If thine enemy hunger, give him to eat, 
 "be thirsty, give him to drink, for by so doing thou shalt heap burn- 
 ing coals on his head." No ; these are the exact words of Solomon 
 (Prov. xxv. 22) from whom Paul took them. And in Job what lan- 
 guage! " I call God to witness that I never rejoiced at mine enemy's 
 hurt (xxxi. 29) ." And is not the voice of the Pharisees heard too 
 in this touching concert ? Samuel the Little, the colleague of the 
 Gamaliel who was Paul's teacher, adopted as a motto the above- 
 cited words of Solomon, " If thou see thine enemy fall, &c."; re- 
 peating them with such a preference that, though Solomon's, they 
 
88 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 are found in the Mischna under his name. "We have seen Ben Azai 
 front the whole law with these words from Genesis, " God created 
 man in his own image," and why he took them as his principle of 
 action in preference to all others. " Give not evil for evil," says 
 the Zohar, " but trust thou in God." If Solomon (Prov. xvii. 13) 
 says, " Evil will always be with the ungrateful man, with him who 
 pays good with evil," the Pharisees push this severity much farther, 
 saying: Yes, and upon him too vrho gives evil for evil let the same curse 
 jail. Does not the Law say, If thou see thine enemy's ox strayed, return it 
 to him ? " Moses complains to God, that the Israelites threaten to 
 stone him "Go," says God, "before all the people"; meaning, as 
 says the Midrasch Babbi, Imitate me; does not God pay evil with good? 
 Well, thou too shouldst give Israel good for evil. 
 
 We have seen Moses command his people, whose wounds, from 
 their Egyptian servitude, were still bleeding, to love their enemies, 
 and what is more, their political enemies. Here is an example of 
 tho constant reaction of Jewish ethics upon .the civil polity, ruling 
 this polity and making it noble and clement. But in whom is the 
 spirit of nationality more quick and keen than in the Pharisees, - 
 as witness the austere dispositions and extreme precautions with 
 which they are reproached ? Still, have they never raised them- 
 selves to those serene hights, where even the mast generous pas- 
 sions are hushed, and where the peace that pervades you leaves no*- 
 thing possible but love ? Yes, the Pharisees have had such mo- 
 ments, when their weeping country herself could extract from 
 them only a cry of pardon. The Bible says that, on their return 
 from battle, flushed with victory, the Israelite soldiers sang: Praise 
 the Lvrd, for his love is everlasting. A word is, however, wanting to 
 this formula, viz : for it is good (KI TOB) . Is it chance or design ? 
 No one knows. The Pharisees have always regarded it as a sign of 
 mourning, avoid in the national joy; for God, they say, rejoices 
 not at the fall of the wicked. A still more delicate thought On 
 the morning of the day the Egyptians were drowned in the Bed 
 Sea, the angels, they say, presented themselves before the throne of 
 God to sing as usual his praise. " Silence," says the Eternal, " my 
 creatures are about to perish in the waters and ye would sing ! "" 
 The Israelites, too, even to this day, imitate the angels, and on the 
 \ seventh day of Passover, by the express order of their masters the 
 Pharisees, do not complete the praise-formula (Hallel) , their joy 
 is not unalloyed, there is a void it is sorrow for the Egyptians. Is 
 it at least permitted to invoke divine vengeance upon the head of 
 our persecutors ? And did Paul teach something new when he said: 
 Bless those who persecute you and do not curse them f The Pharisees 
 say as much, and perhaps more ; for not only will they not curse 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. * 89 
 
 their enemy, but they will not even complain of him at the divine 
 bar. " Woe to the accuser, still more than to the accused ! " They 
 add, " If thou accuse thy brother, thine own case shall be examined 
 before his; thy punishment shall precede that for which thou askest 
 against him." "What ought we do?" says Paul (Rom. xii. 19). 
 "Not to take vengeance, 'but leave it to God." This is a little different 
 from the command given in verse 14, to bless one's enemies ; still it 
 suffices for poor human nature, and is moreover what the doctors 
 require. " What shall I do to these men who persecute me and 
 whom I could hand over to the authorities? " asks one of his col- 
 league. "Be resigned," says the other, "and trust in God; he 
 will render them powerless." Or again : " Let the dawn and the 
 evening twilight always find thee in the Beth-Hamidrasch, and they 
 will cease of themselves." Are we allowed at least to reply to those 
 who insult us ? Those who answer not insult by insult, who bear injury 
 without murmur, who act from love and rejoice not at misfortune, for 
 them has it been written : ' The friends of God shall be as the sun in all 
 his strength. 1 
 
 What is the reward of this pardon of our enemies ? It is pardon 
 for ourselves. He who forgives not, shall not get forgiveness him- 
 self. We read in Matthew (vi. 14) : " If you pardon men their of- 
 fenses, your heavenly Father will pardon yours, but if you," &c. 
 Is not this the thousand-times repeated doctrine of the Pharisees ? 
 If Moses says that God has tolerance for sin, and pardons rebellion, 
 the Pharisees interpret this after their fashion: " Whose sins does 
 God pardon? His, who himself pardons injury." "Whoever is 
 quick, they say, to forgive, his sins too shall be forgiven." 
 
 But the practice of the Pharisees is no less eloquent. Prayers 
 were offered against a great drought that was producing famine. R. 
 Eliezar, R. Akiba's master, fasts and prays to no purpose ; rain is 
 far off. R. Akiba fasts likewise and prays: Our Father, our King, 
 we have no other King but thee ! Pity us, O Father, for thine own 
 love's sake ! And clouds soon covered the sky and an abundant rain 
 fell. " Is it that the one of these doctors is greater or holier than 
 the other ? " asks the Talmud. No, it is simply that he forgives 
 more easily. This same Akiba one day asks R. Nehounia the Elder: 
 "By what merit hast thou reached this great^ age ?" " My son," 
 said the holy old man, " I have never taken presents and never re- 
 fused forgiveness." And to a similar question another doctor re- 
 plied : " I have never lain down with hatred to my brother in my 
 breast." " God is my witness," said another, " that my head has 
 never rested on the pillow, before I pardoned all who injured me;" 
 and through these examples Israel repeats every evening before 
 lying down: " Master of the world, I pardon every sin and every 
 
yU . JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 wrong done to my person, to my property, to my honor, or to all 
 that I have ; let no one be punished on my account." This is not all, 
 adds another authority: " No person has ever done me evil, that I 
 have not pardoned him, and even from that day done what I could 
 to serve him (Zohar) . 
 
 The Gospel prescribes also the offender's duty. If thou bring 
 thine offering to the altar, and then remember that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee, be thou first reconciled to thy brother " (Mat. 
 v. 23) . Is not this the echo of the ancient Baraita ? " Though the 
 offender should sacrifice all the sheep of Arabia, he shall not be 
 free before asking the pardon of the offended." Charity is more 
 than all sacrifices. " I love mercy and not sacrifice," said tbe 
 prophet. When there is charity, say in their turn the Pharisees, even 
 idolatry is tolerated. The holy name of God is often blotted out 
 by the bitter waters, that the married may be reconciled (Numb. v. 
 25) , say they elsewhere. But in vain shall we search in the Phari- 
 saical writings for what immediately follows the Gospel precept, 
 viz., the motive of the reconciliation : Agree, says Jesus, quickly 
 with thine adversary, while thou art in the way with him, lest he 
 deliver thee to the judge and the judge deliver thee to the omcer, 
 and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt 
 by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the last farthing 
 (Mat. v. 25). We would, for the honor of the Jewish name, inter- 
 pret this passage in a sense altogether spiritual, but the context 
 forbids it, and the parallel passage in Luke is perhaps still more 
 explicit (Luke xii. 58) . 
 
 Both sides have given our duties on this score. The Gospels, 
 as well as the Talmud, have laid down the methods to be followed 
 in its performance. If thy brother has erred against thee, go and 
 tell him his fault privately ; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy 
 brother ; but if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or 
 two more, that in the irouth of two or three witnesses every word 
 may be established ; and if he neglect to hear them, tell it to the 
 Church ; but if he neglect to hear the Church let him be unto thee 
 as a heathen and a publican " (Mat. xviii. 15 and seq.) 
 
 Let us now hear the Pharisees. " Sins against our neighbor are 
 not pardoned on the Day of Atonement before our having sought a 
 reconciliation with him. Ii he refuses forgiveness, return a second 
 and a third time taking with us three witnesses ; if he still remain 
 obstinate, declare to ten persons (the Church) that apologies have 
 been made him and that he refuses to accept them." And further- 
 more they say : " Let not the injured refuse his forgiveness ; for it 
 has been said of the Gabaonites when they demanded the lives of 
 Saul's children : They were not of the family of Israel, whose special 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 character is modesty, mercy, and charity; and for the Pagan^ only 
 it written : They keep their wrath forever (Amos i. 11) . II it^,; 
 actual injury only that apologies should be made? Are they nc 
 required as well for ungracious words and proposals ? Whoever, 
 says the Talmud, afflicts his neighbor, even by mere words, is 
 obliged to ask his pardon. And if the offended man has died, then 
 take ten persons with thee, stand before his tomb, and say: ' I have 
 sinned against the God of Israel and against thee ' (the dead) . 
 
 Did the Pharisees, so prone to forgiveness, always wait, as was 
 their privilege, till apologies were made them ? We have already 
 seen that their custom was to close each day by a general and spon- 
 taneous forgiveness. Did they never push their humility to the 
 degree of provoking by all means a reconciliation? Their history 
 furnishes us with more than one example of this noble virtue. It 
 tells us that Eabbi Zera did not cease to put himself in the way of 
 an offender waiting impatiently for the least indication of a wish on 
 his part for reconciliation. But their heroism went further still. 
 Rab (Abba Arikha) , the immediate disciple of Juda the Holy, and 
 whose name is one of the most illustrious in Talmudical annals, 
 was affronted by a butcher. Twelve whole months passed and the 
 buteher showed no sign of sorrow. The evening of the day of 
 Atonement at length arrived. What does the Pharisee Doctor do ? 
 He simply goes himself to ask pardon of the butcher. He knocks 
 at his door. The butcher, not deigning even to open the door for 
 him, looks out the window " 'T is thou, Abba ? " he says. "Away 
 with thee, then ; I have naught to do with thee." Tradition adds 
 that as he was cutting a cow's head, the knife struck him on the 
 head and he died. 
 
 Does all this mean that the Talmud does not show the explosions 
 which suffering, grief, and insult will sometimes cause ? We are far 
 from saying so. The Pharisees were not creatures of pure reason, 
 of abstractions made to idealize some virtue ; but real living be- 
 ings, with strong and generous passions and most sensitive to the 
 humiliations and calumnies of which they were constantly the ol?- 
 jects. So, nothing wonderful that we have to deplore in the Talmud 
 expressions that ordinary grief could not force from them. And 
 the Gospels far less excusable however the Gospels, whose ex- 
 ample and worth are a thousand times greater, have they nothing 
 analogous? Does Christian charity never falsify itself? Beside 
 maxims or acts whose merit cannot be too highly appreciated, are 
 truly others that bring these books to a mere human level. In this 
 light must we view the terrible threats Jesus utters against those 
 towns that would not receive his apostles ? Must not the tree that 
 bears no fruit " be uprooted and cast into hell-fire ? '" Arc not the 
 
92 JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 Pagans called dogs, to whom must not be given the bread intended 
 for the house of Israel ? Does not the habitual meekness of Jesus 
 continually falsify itself whenever he has some reproach to make 
 against his enemies the Pharisees ? What become of all those ten- 
 der reproaches, those mild corrections, that patience and indulgence 
 lavished upon thieves and adulterers, when he has to address those 
 detested Pharisees ? For them the most cruel imputations, oppro- 
 brious epithets of hypocrites, fools, blind, whited sepulchres, serpents, 
 race of vipers, and in short the most dreadful imprecations. Father, 
 mother, sisters, wife, children all must be sacrificed to Jesus to 
 be worthy of him. To follow him, the last duties to the remains 
 of a father must be refused. The brother must deliver the brother 
 to death, the father the child, and children rise against their pa- 
 rents. In judgment-day who shall be placed on the right hand of 
 the son of man; who shall inherit the kingdom prepared from the 
 foundation of the world ? Those who shall have done acts of kind- 
 ness to the least of his brethren. And does not the remembrance of 
 unjust persecutions make Paul too sometimes forget the duties and 
 language of charity? One Alexander, a smith, caused him, it ap- 
 pears, some trouble. What does the abolisher of the Law, the 
 greatest of the Apotles, say regarding him? "Alexander, the 
 smith, has caused me much trouble ; the Lord shall recompense 
 him according to his deeds " (II Tim. iv. 14) . Is this indeed from 
 the same man that wrote, ' Bless those who persecute you and 
 curse them not " ? (Rom. xii. 14). 
 
 And yet how far is the Gospel from the Talmud ? The Talmud - 
 ists yield sometimes to passions far different from those excited by 
 private quarrels with third parties, viz, to the love of country, of 
 nation, enslaved and trodden down by barbarian idolaters. Had 
 Christianity these legitimate excuses of patriotism and nationality ? 
 The impatience and imprecations of the former are less personal 
 and consequently less odious. Much more have the Talmud and 
 the Talmudists as much weight in Judaism, as the apostles in Chris- 
 tianity ? The Gospel language is divine and infallible ; the Tal- 
 mudical (in what does not regard precept or dogma) is in no re- 
 spect so. No Jew concedes inspiration to the Pharisees, as no 
 Christian refuses it to the Gospels. Paul is the Moses of Christ- 
 ians. The Pharisees are the Fathers of the Jewish Church. Can 
 the words of the one have the same weight, the same value, as those 
 of the other ? No one will say so. Besides, when the Jewish 
 Church formulized its doctrines it was dominant. All its words 
 and teachings are stamped with the most absolute independence ; if 
 had not to conquer souls, its temples overflowed with adherents ; ii 
 had, above all, no need to refine on some anterior ethics, to flatter 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 93 
 
 the poor and the humble, to make a party ; it had one already, a 
 very grand and imposing one, the nation. "Whatever it speaks comes 
 simply from the source of its doctrine, a natural, spontaneous jet; 
 it has no poses, it speaks and acts naturally, because, far from think- 
 ing it needs the assumption of airs of charity and love to excite de- 
 sertions, it is thwarted from without in its generous impulses; it is 
 tempted rather to stifle the words of love ready to escape it, to dis- 
 play an excessive austerity, in order to ward off attacks. We ask 
 furthermore, has the ethical charity of the one the same value as 
 the charity of the other ? Is not one word from the Pharisees 
 worth two from the Gospels ? And these words, of which external 
 circumstances give no explanation, and the natural kindness of the 
 utterer as little, traversing as they do many generations, to what 
 are we to ascribe them ? To circumstances ? Or to men ? Either, 
 doubtless, would have killed all generous expansion, all charitable 
 impulses. The glory must lawfully revert to but one source, and 
 that is Judaism. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 TO SESHSTERS. 
 
 OT THX PHARISEES' REPROACH TO JESTJS. PASSAGE FROV EZEXTEL rHARI- 
 
 SEES INTERPRETATION. BROTHERLY REPROOF ; rrs DIFFERENT FORMS. AARON TM 
 
 MODEL OF A PRIEST ABRAHAM THE MODEL OF APOSTLES. DOCTORS STRIVE TO 
 
 COWVEBT SINNERS. TESTIMONT OF THE GOSPELS. PRIVILEGES or THB CON- 
 VERTED. THE GENTILES. MEASURE FOR MEASURE. UNIVERSALITY OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Next to charity and the forgiveness of injury, the doctrine most 
 particularly ascribed to Jesus is love to sinners. We do not examine 
 the political prudence of a new doctrine's preaching the reinstate- 
 ment of so many prescripts of the ruling Church, and appealing to 
 all the religious malcontents, to found, like a new Romulus, a 
 Christian Rome after the method that gave life and glory to Rome 
 Pagan ; or (to use a Hebrew example) of imitating Absalom's 
 greetings and promises, in David's anti-chambers, to all the fractious 
 spirits he met there. Whatever were the motives, the fact of the 
 proceeding is beyond doubt. Jesus surrounds himself with all sorts 
 of sinners, new patients to whom he brings a cure ; he absolves 
 with a word an adulteress, sits to table with the dregs of the people, 
 and equivocates strangely upon the censures of the Pharisees for 
 
94 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 not drawing near sinners to convert them, but sitting to table and 
 making free with them, before they were cleansed. Against the 
 Pharisees he urges the scriptural and traditional doctrines that they 
 never dreamed of disputing, and that had been ever accredited by 
 the Hebrews. "If a man," he asks his disciples, "have a hundred 
 sheep and one of them go astray, doth he not leave the ninety-nine 
 and go into the mountains to seek the strayed one ? and if he find 
 it, he rejoiceth more over it truly than over those that had not 
 strayed " ( Mat xviii, 12 ). In Luke we have this parable too, with 
 others of the same kind : that of the woman who lost a piece of 
 silver, and that of the prodigal son. Well! we have, in a passage 
 from the prophets, both the idea and simile that Jesus employs 
 against the descendants and imitators of the prophets : " The word 
 of the Lord came unto me," says Ezekiel ; " Son of man prophesy 
 against the sheph erds of Israel and say to them : woe to the shep- 
 herds of Israel who feed only themselves ! Should not the shep- 
 herds feed the flocks ? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe yourselves with 
 the wool ; ye kill the fat sheep, and ye feed not the flock. Ye have 
 not healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up the limb 
 of the wounded. Ye have not brought again the strayed nor sought 
 for the lost, but with force and cruelty have ye ruled them. And 
 they were scattered because without a shepherd, and because a prey 
 to all the beasts of the fields. My sheep wandered through all the 
 mountains and high hills, and were scattered over the face of the 
 earth. . . . Thus said the Lord God : I shall demand my sheep 
 and seek them : as the shepherd, when with his sheep, seeketh the 
 strayed ones, so shall I seek my sheep and draw them from the 
 places to which they have strayed in the cloudy and dark day. . . . 
 I shall seek the lost and bring again those that were hidden, and 
 bind the broken limbs of the wounded. ... As for you, my flock, 
 behold ! I am about to separate the sheep, the rams and the he- 
 goats/' (From this comes the saying of Jesus as to the separation 
 of the sheep from the goats at the last judgment. ) Here is unques- 
 tionably the model which long preceded Jesus and his doctrine, and 
 which he could not forget in his utterances. But we must examine 
 more closely what the Pharisees taught on this subject and see if 
 they entertained the aversion and estragemnent towards the sinner 
 with which the Gospels reproach them. 
 
 Two things appear from Jesus' utterances on this subject : First, 
 the duty of working for the conversion of sinners and the charity 
 we should entertain towards them ; and second, the greatness of 
 those same sinners when converted, the place they occupy in God '3 
 love, and the glorious crown promised them. We shall not inquire 
 of the Bible if these ideas are unknown to the Pharisees, as we 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 95 
 
 have just seen what Ezekiel writes. There is, however, a precept 
 that forms a transition from the Bible thoughts on this question to 
 the Pharisaical ones, viz., fraternal correction; and it is one of 
 those subjects which, without tradition, lose some of their value in 
 the Mosaic Law. Its literal signification is an amicable adjustment 
 of disputes between friends. It is Pharisaical tradition alone 
 that points out the duty of striving for the conversion of sinners, 
 rigorously enjoining its practice, even at the sacrifice of our self- 
 love, at the risk of the rudest affronts, in short, at every hazard 
 save that of humiliating the sinner. For, beside the precept to 
 fraternal admonition, the Pharisees see a provision and limitation 
 against abuse, in the words of Moses as interpreted by them : 
 " Reprove him, but always so that thou dost not expose thyself to 
 sin ; that is, to humiliate and put to shame thy neighbor." And, 
 what is remarkable, it is this very subject that draws from the 
 Pharisees the assertion upon which Jesus bases his excessive toler- 
 erance towards the sinner, viz : that no one is free from sin, and 
 that consequently no one has the right to judge too severely hi* 
 neighbor. 
 
 Did not Rabbi Tryphon say, respecting this precept : " I should 
 be much surprised, were there any in this generation who know 
 how to reprove. I should be much more so, replies another, were 
 there any who know how to profit by a reproof ; for my part, I 
 should be so only were I told that some have the right to reprove ; 
 for, if one say to another : ' Take out the straw that is in thine 
 eye,' he would get for answer: ' Take out the beam that is in thine 
 own.'"* If I mistake not, here are both the language and the 
 ideas of the Gospel, less the abuse there made of them. 
 
 We shall not mention the Hebrew institutions whose only object 
 was to bring the strayed to the right way ; or that exhortation to 
 which Jesus owed many an inspiration and which rang continually 
 through the portico of the temple, in the synagogues and public 
 places, when, in time of great public calamity, the whole people 
 were assembled about the oldest and most venerable Doctors, who 
 spoke to the weeping multitude the following words preserved in the 
 Mischna : f " My brothers, it is neither hair-cloth nor fasting that 
 obtains pardon for you ; for the Bible says not that God had regard 
 to the hair-cloth and fasting of the Ninevites, but truly to their 
 repentance and amendment. And it is moreover written (Joel ii, 13) , 
 Rend your hearts and not your garments." The Pharisees had so 
 high an idea of the conversion of sinners, that the words of the 
 prophet respecting Aaron, viz., " he drew many from sin," % suffice 
 
 * Talmud Arachin, folio 16. t Talmud Taanith, folio 15, So. * Malachi, ii. 6. 
 
96 JEWISH AND CHKISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 them to build a splendid edifice, that need not envy the most tender 
 Gospel effusions in favor of sinners. " How," they ask, " did Aaron 
 win men from sin ? Whenever he found that any one was following 
 wrong paths, he sought carefully such a one's friendship and soci- 
 ety. What was the result ? The sinner said to himself : Oh ! if the 
 holy priest knew my conduct, how he would flee me ! And it was 
 this constant thought that brought him gradually to repentance."* 
 
 And is Aaron the only friend of sinners mentioned by the Phar- 
 isees? David had already said, " I shall teach thy ways to the 
 wicked that they may return to thee (Bs. ii. 15) . This species of 
 spiritualization which tradition mentions respecting Bible person- 
 ages is of much older date ; it reaches even to Abraham. It is 
 perhaps difficult to find in Genesis anything resembling an apostle- 
 ship of the great patriarch. Some phrase, indeed, occasionally 
 invests the pastor, the Arab Melkh, the soldier, the patriarch, with 
 a far more splendid halo than the gold and silver one given him by 
 the Bible. But ten to one that even a sharp criticism lie hard set 
 to discover in tradition a clear trace of the apostleship of Abraham. 
 If such is believed to-day and is admitted even by the Church, it is 
 derived from the Pha-risees ; to these belong the honor ; their gen- 
 ius it is, that has changed "the slaves got at Haran" into souls 
 of sinners gained at Haran, f Could such transformations be possi- 
 ble for those who did not esteem the conversion of sinners as one 
 of the highest and holiest virtues ? And accordingly how profuse 
 and eloquent are their exortations. "Whoever shall save his 
 neighbor for the glory of God, shall merit the heritage of the 
 Lord."* 
 
 To love men and to bring them close to the law were precepts 
 upon which Hillel and Schammai were always agreed . The Zohar, 
 above all, utters words surpassingly sublime and tender : " It is the 
 duty of the righteous man to pursue the wicked one and reconquer 
 him at any cost ; this is the highest homage he can pay the Eter- 
 nal. . . Oh! did the world but know what merit it could acquire by 
 the conversion of the impious, it would cling to their steps as to life." 
 As to a certain Rabbi Meir (who gave way sometimes to passion, 
 like Paul against the smith Alexander) , a crowd of Doctors see in 
 the sinner only a sick brother whom they must cure. We shall 
 cite here but three examples of this. The first is of the woman 
 Berouria, who, in spite of the grammatical rendering, found in the 
 Psalms, that we ought to pray for the death of sin and not for 
 that of the sinner ||. The other is much more ancient, being the 
 
 * Yalkout, ii. 87 (Venice Edition.) f Gen. xii. 5 Talmud Sanhed. fol. 99, &c. 
 
 t Talmud Tamid, foL 28. Aboth, Chap. ii. Q Berachoth, fol 10, 
 
JEWISH AND-CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 97 
 
 wife of Abba HilMya, -who prayed incessantly for the conversion of 
 some sinful acquaintance. * The Doctor is Rabbi Zera, who sought 
 the company of sinners to reform them, and was so familiar with 
 them that he incurred the censure of his colleagues. But the Eabbi 
 died and then these wretched people said in their hearts : Hitherto 
 the little Doctor with burnt feet prayed for us, but now who is going 
 to pray for us ? God touched their hearts and they repented, f But 
 what better testimony can we have than that of the Gospels ? Well, 
 the Gospels themselves attest most solemnly the extreme zeal of the 
 Pharisees for the conversion of the Gentiles. " Woe to you (cries 
 Jesus,) Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you scour sea and 
 land to make one proselyte, and when you get him you make him. 
 twofold more the child of hell than yourselves ! " 
 
 Once converted, the sinner need not envy the lot of the most 
 just ! Jesus, as we have seen, is eager to place him above the inno- 
 cent, and that always, without observing the limits which common 
 sense, justice and morality impose, and which the Pharisees are care- 
 ful not to overstep. Can, indeed, every sort of convert aspire to the 
 same degree of happiness and reward that attends the most just ? 
 Jesus, who wishes to attract to him, at any price, sinners, has no 
 reserve. Not so, the wiser Pharisees. This is why the converted 
 sinner, about whom we are going to speak, is the converted sinner 
 eminently ; he who has filled all the conditions of a great peni- 
 tence, who, in a year or an hour of heroism and self-denial effaces 
 a whole life of licentiousness or crime. Such a convert, indeed, 
 has no more eloquent eulogists or better friends than the Pharisees. 
 One hour of penitence and good works in this world, say they, is more 
 worth than a whole life in the world to come; J doubtless, because it 
 can win the latter. Is it that the Pharisees would not have con- 
 ceded merit to works and exterior acts, as one might suppose from 
 the imputations of the Gospel ? Far from it ! The Pharisees are 
 so far from being satisfied with a mere formulism, with acts origi- 
 nating in no conviction or feeling, that they have established an 
 important distinction with respect to the indispensable interior 
 changes one that might surprise us, did we not already know that 
 the epithet, " Beligion of love," belongs not exclusively to Christi- 
 anity. This distinction is : if it be through fear of the power, the 
 wrath, or even the greatness of God that a sinner repents, the sina 
 he has committed will be reckoned against him only as faults, as 
 mere omissions ; but if it be through a disinterested love of God 
 and of his perfections, then his sins are counted as merits ; what- 
 ever up to that time was a cause of condemnation, now becomes a 
 title to glory and eternal happiness g. And what is this happiness ? 
 
 * Taanith, fol. 23. t Sanhed, foL 37. 1 Aboth, Chap. iv. Talmud. Yoma, fol. 86. 
 
98 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 According to the most moderate of the Doctors, it is all the prom-' 
 ises made by the prophets to Israel *. "All the prophecies," say 
 they, " refer but to penitents; as to the jnst themselves, for them it 
 is written : * No eye,' O God, ' but thine, has seen their reward.'" 
 But other Doctors go much further, and hesitate not to tell us, 
 "the just, the perfect, will not be worthy to sit with ptenitents in 
 the world to come." f 
 
 To cite all we could on this subject would be never to end. 
 They who said, "we must take, as leader, one who has frightful 
 reptiles on his back" (a sinful past), so that if he grew proud, 
 they could say to him, look behind! have not blushed to give us as 
 guides and models men come from the worst slime of immorality 
 and Paganism. For them, what else is the father of the human race 
 but a penitent. Abraham, his father Tarech, his son Ishmael, Reu- 
 ben, one of the twelve fathers of the nation, Aaron himself, who 
 so well taught others to repent, have they not been sinners ? Is 
 not David, the King of Israel, the Pharisees' representative of 
 all sinners ? % Who are sunk deeper in all kinds of sin than Achab 
 and Manassah? Still they are models of penitence, whom the 
 Pharisees praise to envy . And who are Schemaia and Abtalion, 
 the fathers and oracles of the Pharisaical school, if not converted 
 Pagans ? And did pure Israelitic blood flow in the veins of Bag- 
 Bag and Ben Hehe him who said : " The reward shall be propor- 
 tioned to the suffering," || and of the great Chaldean commentator 
 Ankylos, and Rabbis Akiba and Meir, and many more? The 
 Pharisees honor themselves by saying that one came from the 
 Amalekite, Aman ; another from Sennacherib; another yet, from 
 Sisera, who were not, as we know, heroes of sanctity. Eabbi Sim- 
 eon Ben Lakish was a highway robber, and Rabbi Eleazar Ben 
 Dourdeya a libertine. And how pathetic the language of Juda, the 
 Holy, as to the latter. On being told that this sinner, after a peni- 
 tence of a few moments, had died, he wept and said : " There are 
 those who gain eternal happiness, only after long years of toil J 
 but, on the other hand, there are some who gain it in a few mo- 
 ments." fl 
 
 And is the lot of converted Pagans inferior ? This God of Israel, 
 this local and national fetich that Yoltaire and others have imag- 
 ined, does not disdain to send his prophet to convert the Ninevites. 
 "Thou truly, hast had pity for this gourd that cost thee neither 
 labor nor trouble," said he to this Jew wha could not rise to the 
 
 * Talmud Sanhed, fol. 99. f Talmud Berach, i. oL 34. tt Talmud Aboda Zara, foL 5. 
 f ke Rabbi Eliezer, xli. || Aboth, Chap. v. T Talmud Aboda Zara, 17. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 99 
 
 divine thoughts, "And should not I spare that great city Nineveh 
 wherein are more than six score thousand souls ? " * 
 
 What example did the Pharisees, in their public discussions, 
 set before the elect people ? "We have seen; that of Nineveh. 
 
 Why is Israel called the people of the God of Abraham, rather 
 than of the God of Isaac or Jacob ? Because Abraham was the 
 Jirst proselyte f, and that wherever there are true believers there are 
 God's people a noble idea, which Christianity has turned against 
 the Pharisaical Judaism that instructed it. Why are proselytes 
 called the loved of God, while the just Israelites are called only they 
 who love God f " Because/' replies B. Simeon Ben Jochai (the chief 
 of the cabalistic school from which we believe Jesus learned every- 
 thing), "proselytes surpass Israelites as much as those loved of 
 God surpass those who simply love him "J. "Oh!" he adds, 
 "how God loves proselytes ; on whom are lavished all the names 
 with which Israel has been honored, viz : servant, minister, friend ! 
 
 Abraham, David, were proud to be called proselytes. Has not 
 the latter said (Ps. cxlvi. 9) : " God is the guardian of proselytes?'* 
 But how expressive the parable used by B. Simeon Ben Jochai to 
 express the divine predeliction for reformed Gentiles ! The Gos- 
 pel has nothing like it, "A father of a family had a flock that 
 went every day to feed, and returned at night. Once a wild goat 
 joined the flock and would not go away from it. The sheep were 
 led to the park, with the goat following ; in the morning they were 
 taken to the fields, and the goat still kept with them. So that the 
 father conceived for the goat a great love ; he never absented him- 
 self from his folks without telling them to allow the goat to feed at 
 his pleasure, and not to strike or ill-treat him. And when the goat 
 returned in the evening, the master himself gave him drink. One 
 day the servants said : " Master, thou hast bucks, tame goats and 
 lambs in abundance, why this love for the wild goat ? " The master 
 replied : " The former follow but their nature, which decrees them 
 to feed, during the day, on the fields, and to return, in the evening, 
 to the park. But the abode of wild goats is the forest. How should 
 I not love him, that has given up his forest, his vast plains, his lib- 
 erty and his comrades to shut himself up in my park ? " g We need 
 not make the application. The history of the Pharisees, like that of 
 Christianity, gives us numerous instances of the sudden conversion 
 of the Gentiles charged with the execution of some bloody decree 
 against the person of the Babbis. Thus the jailer of Babbi Chan- 
 ina Ben Teradion threw himself into the fire with his victim ||, and 
 
 * Jonas, fin. t Talmud Succoth, 49, J STecliilta Yalcot, vol. I, foL 94. 
 
 g Bamidbar Rabba, Sect. vlii. U Talmud Aboda Zara, f. 18. 
 
100 JEWISH AND CHBISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 the officer charged with the execution of the death-sentence, npon 
 Kabban Gamaliel, threw himself from the top of the roof and was 
 killed converts both, who had already secretly professed Juda- 
 ism, saving themselves by death from a terrible alternative. 
 
 The last case was that of Kattia bar Schalom. His opposition to 
 a tyrannical decree against the Jews caused him to be suspected of 
 Jewish magic and to be condemned to the wild beasts. He was led 
 to punishment, when a matron, entertaining also, as it seems, Jew- 
 ish sentiments, and recognizing him by some Jewish sign perhaps, 
 cried out : "Poor vessel, that goes away without paying tollage ! " 
 Kattia understanding the words, drew a knife from his pocket, cut 
 the prepuce and cried, " Now that I have paid my toll I may pass." 
 At his death a supernatural voice was heard saying : " Kattia Bar 
 Schalom has attained life eternal." 
 
 A maxim in Matthew (viii. 1) has some affinity -to -the love for 
 sinners : " Judge not, that you may not be judged." It must be 
 an old Jewish one, since Joshua Ben Perachia (whom the Talmud 
 asserts was Jesus' Teacher) , and Hillel repeated it. The former 
 taught: "Judge all men favorably." The other, " Judge not thy 
 neighbor as long as thou art not in his place (in the same situa- 
 tion). " For," adds Jesus, " as thou metest, so shall it be meted 
 unto thee, and as thou judgest so shalt thou be judged." As to the 
 last idea, it forms, with the Pharisees, the conclusion of all favor- 
 able decisions: "As thou hast judged leniently thy neighbor, be 
 thou too mercifully judged in heaven." And is it not also contained 
 in that other maxim already cited : " Whoever invokes the judg- 
 ment of God upon his neighbor, shall have his own case first ex- 
 amined." 
 
 But Jesus has also said : "As thou givest, so shall it be given 
 unto thee." The language and idea are purely Pharisaical a 
 thought most familiar to this school : "As man measures so shall it 
 be measured unto him," says the Talmud * " and not only the en- 
 tire measure but any part as well. ... If all rules fail, one will 
 stand, and that is measure for measure" Is it not the last rule of 
 God's justice ? So, the Pharisees see it everywhere in history. If 
 the cotemporaries of Noah were drowned, it was because they arro- 
 gated the power of bringing rain.f If Miriam deserved that all 
 Israel stopped traveling for seven days, it was because she stopped 
 some moments to watch the cradle of Moses exposed on the Nile.J 
 If Samson had his eyes put out, it was because he consulted but 
 them in the choice of a wife. If Absalom was hung by his hair, 
 it was because he was vain of its beauty. If the woman suspected 
 
 * Talmud Sota, I, fol. 8. t Talmud Sanhedrim, fol. 108. * Talmud Sola, fol. 11. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 101 
 
 ' of adultery make an offering of barley without oil or incense, it is 
 because she has descended to the level of the beasts that eat barley. 
 If the incredulous captain was crushed to death by the crowd of 
 buyers, it was because he mocked Elisha's promise of plenty, say- 
 ing : " Shall God open windows in the sky."* And was not Hillel 
 himself inspired with the same thought, when addressing a crane 
 that he saw floating on the waters, he said : " Because thou hast 
 drowned, hast thou in turn been drowned, and such shall be like- 
 wise the fate of thy murderers."! 
 
 "What we have said is a full answer to the old charge against the 
 Pharisees, that they would monopolize virtue and eternal happiness 
 because Israel is a people elect and Abraham its father. That such 
 a charge was the favorite theme of the early Christians cannot be 
 denied ; this was most frequently employed as a reason to reject 
 Judaism and to pave the way for theii; apostleship to the Gentiles. 
 From the time of Jesus echoed in Palestine, " Do not say to your- 
 selves, ' "We have Abraham for our father;' for I say to you God can 
 raise from these stones even, children to Abraham." (Mat. iii. 9.) 
 Paul calls Abraham, " father of the circumcision; that is to say, of 
 those not only circumcised, but who likewise adhere to the faith of 
 our father." (Rom. iv. 12.) And more clearly in chapter 9, verse 
 6: " But all the descendants of Israel are not for that reason of 
 Israel ; nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abra- 
 ham. But in Isaac is it that his posterity should be reckoned; that 
 is to say, the children only of the promise are represented in his 
 seed." And again (Rom. ii, 11), " For God has no respect to per- 
 sons ; " and further on (iv. 11) , " Abraham received the sign of cir- 
 cumcision as a seal of his righteousness by faith while uncircum- 
 cised, that he might be the father of all those who believe though 
 they be uncircumcised." And in the 17th verse, "As it is written, 
 I have made thee a father of many nations." This slur as to Jewish 
 election even free criticism has sometimes made, without reflecting 
 that if the Jews have election it is that they may be less exclusive 
 that they may become universal. Yes, if they were never fused with 
 mankind at any time or place it is that they might be better united 
 in heart and spirit to mankind in all times and places ; and had this 
 fusion taken place, that would have been the end of their priestly 
 mission and of the religious future of mankind. But does not the 
 aspiration to this universality break forth and show itself in the his- 
 tory and teachings of the Jews ? We have spoken sufficiently of it, 
 when treating of Man and the Gentiles. "We shall now but add a few 
 special maxims to what we have already said 
 
 * II Kings, Tii Sanghed, folio 90. t Aboth ii . 
 
102 toVISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 We have seen that, with the Pharisees, whoever are modest, 
 merciful, charitable, are of the race of Abraham, and that whoever 
 are otherwise, be they Israelites or not, have no share with the 
 former. If there be any term which, on every occasion, the Phari- 
 sees set over that of Israel, it is man. David had said: "God is 
 good to Israel, to men with pure hearts." The Zohar and the Mid- 
 rasch eagerly draw this conclusion from the statement, " God is good 
 to Israel ; is it to all those bearing the name ? By no means, but to 
 those alone who are sinless, to men with pure hearts." " God loves the 
 just," it is said elsewhere. " Why ?" ask the Pharisees. " Because 
 they are not so by heritage, because virtue is not hereditary." The 
 sacerdotal office is a family gift. Can any one be priest or Levite ? 
 No; but he who wishes to be just, though a Pagan, can be so. 
 Why ? because virtue is not an inheritance. This is why God loves 
 the just. " Why," ask our doctors, " has the Law been compared to 
 tile tree of life? Because, as the tree of life stretches it branches 
 over all who enter Paradise, so the law covers with its shade all who 
 come into the world."* 
 
 It is remarkable that Paul adopts the Pharisaical method of 
 interpretation and grammatical distinctions, to exaggerate even the 
 value set on virtue by the Pharisees, and to tear the old diploma of 
 Jewish election. What does he mean when he asserts that, for be- 
 ing the seed of Abraham all are not on that account his children f 
 This is the well known distinction which the Pharisees had made 
 between the legal value of the word Zera, see d, and BEN, child ; un- 
 derstanding by the first, all natural descendants, legitimate or 
 otherwise, just or not ; and by child, the special title of those 
 worthy the name in either a legal or civil point of view. What 
 does he mean when he adds that through Isaac should be reckoned 
 the posterity of Abraham ? Nothing but what the Pharisees had 
 already observed, namely, a somewhat obsolete form of expression, 
 which originated with the Doctors the interpretation : " In Isaac, 
 yet not all Isaac," excluding consequently Esau. Singular destiny 
 of the Pharisaical language and ideas, to furnish the Gospels all 
 their weapons to smite spiritually old Israel, as did the Komans 
 corporally in its external life ! Singular fate of the Jerusalem of 
 the Pharisees, harrassed at once by Pagan Home in the zenith of 
 its power, and by Christian Borne in its cradle, practicing thence- 
 forth its parricidal child's play the one, spoiling it of its royal 
 robe, the other, of the tiara of its eternal priesthood ! This Phari- 
 saical Jerusalem, denounced as the enemy of the human race, esteemed 
 itself but as the last called of the nations, as their vicar, their religious 
 
 * Midrasch, Techillim, explanatory of Ps. L 3. 
 
JEWISH -AND CHRISTIAN. ETHICS. JL03 
 
 representative, scrfar^was it from aspiring to-an exclusive^lection in- 
 imical to humanity. So it has not ceased to express its thought under 
 every form. If God appears to Israel on Sanai and gives him the 
 Law, it is because Edom, Ishmael, all the other nations of the world 
 had been called before him, and because the law is destined to 
 become the universal law when the will of God is accomplished. 
 The Pharisees have a parable of which we have an inverted copy in 
 the Gospels on the subject of the rejection of Israel. The Gospel 
 one is known ; it is that of a king who calls to a solemn feast his 
 ministers, nobles, and distinguished men, but in vain; noone comes. 
 Then he orders his servants: go into the highways and call every- 
 body without distinction. Is not the sense evident ? But let us 
 hear the Pharisees: " A king gave a great dinner and invited all his 
 guests. No one came at the appointed hour. They were waited for 
 a long time, but in vain. At length, towards evening, some guests 
 appeared; the king received them with* joy, and thanked them for 
 coming, saying, ' Were it not for you this fine feast would be lost ; 
 I should have to throw it away.' Thus, they say, has God spoken 
 to Israel: ' Thanks ; for without thee to whom should I have given 
 the great treasure I have prepared for the future ?' " * 
 
 We need not comment on the parables ; all can see the resemb- 
 lance and the vast difference caused by the adverse position Chris- 
 tianity assumed. In view of these parables we ask which of the two 
 the first assuming the original intention of God to be the exclusion 
 of the human race and their admission to be but the accident of Israel's 
 refusal, the second, making God's first thought to be one-of justice, 
 love, and universal charity one that sees in the election of Israel 
 only a temporary expedient, an imperfect realization of the divine 
 idea which, we ask, is the more noble, humanitariaiu and worthy 
 of Deitjy ? The- answer, we think, is easy. 
 
104 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 TRUST IN GJ-OIX 
 
 [CONCLUSION.] 
 
 TBUST PREACHED BY JESUS ITS EXTRAVAGANCE. Two I*HARISAICAL SCHOOLS THE 
 
 JEWISH PROTOTYPES OF THE GOSPEL TRUST. THE DOGMATIC FICTION, MAKING 
 .MAN FREE FROM TOIL. TOIL IN JUDAISM AND IN CHRISTIANITY. PHARISAICAL 
 EXAMPLES. THE OBJECT OF LIFE ; the glory of God. OUR METHOD OF COMPAR- 
 
 >NG THE TWO SYSTEMS OF MORALITY. JUDGMENT OF MR. SALVADOR. ITS INAC- 
 CURACY. HIS MODE OF CHARACTERIZING THE SYSTEMS. MAN AND WOMAN. The 
 HOUSE AND THE CLOISTEB. 
 
 .After charity and love towards our enemies we come naturally to 
 speak of trust in God. Here, as elsewhere, has Christianity taken 
 the most ascetic doctrines of the Jews, those which governed a 
 special sect, a society of meditatists, to make them general rules 
 for human life; here, as-elsewhere, has Christianity transferred the 
 doctrines and ethics of the Essenes to the midst of society, of its 
 concerns and needs; here, in short, as elsewhere, it has pushed 
 ideas to an extreme. As long as it was contented with the maxim : 
 " Enough for each day is the evil thereof," it but echoed the teach- 
 ings of the old Ben Sirach : " Be not troubled about the ills of to- 
 morrow, for thou knowest not what may happen to-day ; " * and of 
 the Pharisees who had said : " To each period its evil;" but it is 
 quite another thing to say: " Take no regard for your life, for what 
 you shall eat or drink " (Mat. vi. 25 and seq. ; Luke xii. 22 and seq) . 
 Consider the birds of the air, they neither sow, nor reap, nor 
 store away, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them; are you not 
 much more worth than they? And who among you, by taking 
 thought, can add to his stature one cubit? And why 'are ye con- 
 cerned for raiment? See the lilies how they grow; they toil not, 
 they spin not, and yet I say unto you Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass 
 which is to-day in the field and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
 shall he not much more clothe you, ye of little faith ? Seek not 
 what ye shall eat or wherewith ye shall be clothed ? " 
 
 When Jesus uttered these words, he left not Judaism, he spoke 
 no unknown doctrine ; on the contrary, he took decided part with 
 one of the two schools that then divided Pharisaism. A marked 
 distinction separated the school of Rabbi Ismael from that of Eabbi 
 Simeon Ben Jochai. While the former, attached to the general 
 spirit of Judaism, would associate the toil of the Law and of con- 
 templation with that of civilization and art, the latter taking as its 
 
 "Talmud Sanhed. fol. IOC. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 105 
 
 chief B. Simeon, the prince of ascetics, the avowed author of that 
 Cabala which has given Christianity everything spoke a very dif- 
 ferent language. It said, after its master : If man tills the ground, 
 harvests, and occupies himself with all material works as they pre- 
 sent themselves in their seasons, how shall he find time to study 
 the Law? No; when Israelites do the will of their heavenly Father, 
 their work is done for them by the hands of others ; but when they 
 are recreant to that will, they must perform not only their own but 
 the work of others as well."* B. Simeon spoke as an ascetic, from 
 the special code perhaps of his sect, which was truly that of the 
 Essenes or Cabalists. However that may be, the genius of Juda- 
 ism has always inclined decidedly to the side of B. Ismael 
 
 Abbaye, one of the greatest TaLmudists, gives admirably the 
 definitive judgment of Judaism on this dispute between the two 
 equally venerable masters. "Many," says he, " have done as Babbi 
 Ismael directs, and attained their object; many others have followed 
 the doctrine of B. Simeon and have not attained theirs, "f 
 
 But this doctrine, so exaggerated by Jesus, has a date anterior to 
 that of the contest between the Babbis. It may be found in those 
 fine counsels given by B. Heir, remarkably qualified though, by a 
 recommendation to an occupation : " Let a man always teach his son 
 an honorable and easy trade ; above all, pray to HI'TT> to whom all 
 wealth belongs ; for in every trade are found, now poverty, now 
 abundance ; neither depends on industry itself, but on a man's 
 deserts." And here the parable used by Jesus appears without dan- 
 ger, tempered as it is by the preceding advice. ' ' "Were the beasts 
 or birds," adds the Talmud, " ever seen plying trades ? Yet they 
 get their food without difficulty, though created but for my use. 
 How much more reasonable that I too should find my food without 
 difficulty, created as I have been to serve the Eternal,! If I find it 
 not, it is because I have done evil, because I myself have sullied the 
 foundation of blessings.";}: Do we wish something bearing a closer 
 likeness to the doctrine of Jesus ? Hear the ancient Doctor Nehorai, 
 of whom the Mischna makes mention in the ethics of the Fathers, 
 and who, from all we know, belonged, very probably, to the sect of 
 theEssenes: "I shall give .up," he says, "all arts and trades to 
 teach my son the Law, for we are nourished on its products, (by its 
 merits) in this world, and the principal is kept for us in the next." 
 Jesus adds, " Do not ask, what shall we eat or drink ?" calling those 
 who do so, people of little faith. "Who cannot recognize here the old 
 Pharisaical maxim, " Whoever having bread in his basket, says, 
 
 * Talmud Berachoth, foL-55. f Talmud, Berachot J Ibid, Eiddoushin, foL 82. 
 
106 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 What shall 1 oat ordrmK to-morrow? is a man of little faith."* But 
 who does not see the difference, also ; the man of little faith, accord- 
 ing to Judaism, is he who, having bread in his basket, yet doubts as 
 to his subsistence for the morrow ; the Christian example is simply 
 he who foresees, or the truesage.^ Above all, beside the extravagant 
 trust in God pushed to improvidence, beside the instance given us 
 of the beasts in the fields, not a word in the Gospels to temper dec- 
 larations so absolute, to encourage us to labor or to condemn idleness. 
 It is not too much to say that we shall search in vain the Gospels, 
 for any resemblance to the great principles incessantly preached by 
 Judaism. Can we wonder that a doctrine, founded on the supposition 
 of a physical state totally different from ours, on the expectation of 
 a general transformation close at hand, that should restore the 
 world to its pre-Adamite condition, wherein " toil in the sweat of 
 the brow " (the consequence of sin) would be unnecessary should 
 speak as though we were already in the full enjoyment of Paradise, 
 or indeed of the resurrection-era seen, in the far distance by the 
 Pharisees also, and finely pictured in their legends, when bread and 
 the tissues of Mylet should come ready-made from the bosom of 
 the earth, | and the Flora and Fauna of our planet be totally 
 changed ? 
 
 The consecration of labor would be as strange for Christianity 
 as would be its absence in Judaism; which, far from teaching the 
 incarnation of the Word in an individual, sees its embodiment in 
 doctrine; which, far from making our salvation depend upon the 
 imputation to us of the merits of another, makes each one his own 
 true redeemer; and which, instead of limiting redemption to a point 
 of history, to the hours of Jesus' crucifixion, realizes and develops 
 it always and everywhere through a succession of ages. Conse- 
 quently, how great the homage paid to labor ! What an air of ease, 
 activity, and wealth in the bosom of Judaism ! In it, we seem to be in 
 the house of a patriarch; here are agriculture, arts, commerce, gold, 
 silver, cattle; through all is religion, blessing and exalting all things 
 by showing their final end in eternity. Christianity is eternity 
 itself, a forced exotic in the climate of Time, with its immobility, 
 repose, and ceaseless Sabbatli. In it, we breathe the air of a cloister; 
 here is religion, faith, supplanting all things; the end confounded 
 with the means ; labor preceded by repose. Need we say that it is 
 the very antithesis of Judaism ? We do not speak of the Bible. 
 Labor, arts, wealth, the goods of life, are so valued there, to the 
 exclusion of all else that Biblical Judaism has been charged with 
 pure materialism by those who mistook the Pentateuch for the 
 
 * Talmud, Sota, 48. t Ibid, Tamid, 32. * Ibid, Sbabbath, 30, &c. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 107 
 
 * 
 
 religions instead of the civil code of the Jews. The past, the present, 
 the future of Judaism, all its history, its fears and hopes, breathe of 
 labor, abundance, and the good things of life. Upon this we need 
 not expatiate, for other pens have well elucidated it. But what 
 merits well the attention of the philosophical reader is that in 
 spite of the powerful action of causes tending to make the Phari- 
 sees forget the Biblical teachings, in spite of the ever-increasing 
 sway of pure speculation, in spite of the enthronement of a spiritual 
 theology in the centre of Judaism, in spite of a belief in immortality, 
 in a future life, in a resurrection, in all the doctrines upon which 
 Christianity has made shipwreck, in spite of political misfortunes 
 and the continual overthrow of its temporal hopes, Judaism has 
 resisted all the enervating influences, all the temptations to an exces- 
 sive mysticism, all the delusions that each day was bringing forth. 
 In vain did tho world rage against the old weak Israel ; Israel, that 
 in its infancy struggled with the angel, found always new force to 
 oppose to the world. In vain did this world display before it all 
 that was horrible and revolting destitution, torture, slavery noth- 
 ing could shake its faith in the icorld, never by it made the synonym 
 of evil and sin. The more Judaic life was compressed, the more 
 vigorously it rebounded from its falls, reacting with new energy 
 against the causes that should seemingly have exasperated it against 
 the world. The world ! Christianity showers upon this its curses, 
 as soon as its lips touch the cup of misery which Judaism drains 
 to the dregs, its faith in the world unshaken. The blessing to the 
 first man ever rings in the ears of the latter: " Till the earth, subdue 
 it, rule over the fishes, the birds, and all the animals on the earth." 
 And Israel replies by obedience, that is by LABOR !" "We need not 
 say what the Bible contains as to the necessity, the duty, the utility 
 of labor. The book is within the reach of all. "What is wonderful 
 is that the unanimous sentiment of the Pharisees has not deviated a 
 point from the Bible doctrine. From the time of Schemaia, the 
 master of the two chiefs of Pharisaism, the Synagogue has no better 
 counsel to give than to love work and to flee grandeur.* If Moses 
 exhorts us to choose life, the Pharisees see in this industry.^ If 
 Solomon invites us "to live joyfully with the wife whom thou 
 lovest," the Pharisees see in this wife the Law, and in this living 
 industry, wliicli two should not bo separated. + Does not the teach- 
 ing of his children some art or trade constitute, with circumcision 
 and the study of the Law, one of a father's first duties -towards 
 them ? Is it not, according to the Pharisees, to make one's child a 
 robber, not to teach him a trade ?g Is not labor a species of culture 
 
 * Abotn, Chap, I. t Talmud Jerushalmi, Kiddoush, Chap. I. 
 
 * Middrasli, Koheletb, Kiddoushim, Chap. L 
 
108 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 far preferable to indolent meditation ?* Is it not necessary lor our 
 health, and does it not honor those who perform it.f And is not 
 the very name sanctified by God who executed the work of creation. J 
 
 But what finishes the picture, is the very example of the Phari- 
 sees, who humbled themselves to the lowest trades, and who thought 
 neither their virtue nor holiness injured by making stockings for 
 Roman courtezans who, debased though they were, but touched 
 perhaps by that Jewish magic proscribed by the Senate, knew no 
 oath more solemn than, / swear by the life of the holy doctors of 
 Israel's country. $ The fact as to industry needs no long citations ; 
 if the history of the Pharisees prove anything, it is that trade or 
 manual labor always accompanied their study of tho Law. "Was not 
 Jesus a carpenter and Paul a tent-maker ? 
 
 As in practical life we adopt some general maxims for starting 
 points, so in all our actions we ought to have some final object in 
 view. Of the first, we have spoken at the commencement of this 
 work, where we gave those summaries of the law which were made 
 the rules of conduct, but which, in the hands of Christianity, became 
 completely void. Now, has Christianity any object to give us with 
 which Pharisaism was not previously acquainted ? Paul has given 
 us the watch- word of which the Church has often made bad use, 
 namely, the glory of God. With him all acts, however poor and mean , 
 should have regard to the greater glory of God. "Whether you eat 
 or drink, or whatever you do, let it be to the glory of God." We 
 think we hear the Pharisees teaching the disciples : "In what little 
 sentence of the Bible is the whole body of the Law enclosed ?" In 
 that from Proverbs which says, " In all thy ways remember God" 
 (iii. 6) ;|1 that is, let all] thy ways lead thee to and in God. Is not 
 unselfish worship one of the oldest Pharisaical doctrines? " Be not 
 as servants who serve their master for pay, but rather as slaves who 
 serve him without hope of reward. "ft Is not this the worship 
 that the Pharisees show us in Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, 
 and in Job, the patriarch of the Gentiles? Of the first it 
 is written: "He loved God" (Is. xli. 8) ; the other cried: 
 "Though He should kill me, I will put my trust in Him" (Job 
 xiii. 15). Is it not in reference to such men- that the Pharisees 
 say: They make peace for the family both above and below;** that is, in 
 heaven and earth ? But it is not merely in religious or moral acts 
 that we should keep this exclusive object in view. "Let all thine ac- 
 tions (ways) tend to the glory of God," says Rabbi Jose in the second 
 chapter of Sentences from the fathers. And what an example Hillel 
 presents ! If he took leave of his disciples at meal-time, it was " to 
 
 * Talmud, Berachot, I, t Ibid, Gitten, VII. $ Gen. II, .2 Aboth 01 R. Nathan. 
 
 2 Ibid, Peeacaim, 113, J] Ibid, Beraclaot, 63. 7 Abotu, I. ** Sanhedrim, 99. 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 109 
 
 feed <j poor man," and when his astonished disciples asked, " Has 
 Hillel poor men to feed every day ?" said : " It is this guest of a day, 
 the soul, that I must keep united to the body." Whatever he did 
 to the body he used to say, " I go to fulfil a precept." Entering 
 the public baths, he said to his disciples : " Do you see those 
 statues of the Emperor, with what care they are kept oiled and washed 
 and preserved from injury? Well, do you not think we should do 
 as much for this body, the image (Ikon) of the eternal King ?"* 
 And is it in our actions alone that we should have this object in 
 view ? Jesus, true to the Pharisaical teachings, is more exacting : 
 " I tell you that at the day of judgment men shall render an account 
 of every idle word" (Mat. xii. 36). " The most trivial words even, 
 exchanged between husband and wife, must be accounted for at the 
 last judgment," say the Pharisees.! "Thou shalt converse about 
 my commandments," says Moses ; and not about vain things, deduce 
 the Pharisees. J David said: " Can ye (Judges), indeed, (if) mute % 
 speak (expound) righteousness ?" (Ps. Iviii. 1) . And the Pharisees 
 in comment: "What plan should man adopt in this world? Let 
 him be rather as a mute. For the Law too? No ; for as to that 
 it is written, THOU SHALT SPEAK. " 
 
 Our theme is finished. Throughout this work we have, it will 
 be noticed, quoted especially from the writings of the Pharisees and 
 their maxims, showing the great part these played in the formation 
 of Christian ethics. If the Bible, the Apocrypha, Philo, have been 
 but rarely appealed to, is it because their replies would have 
 been less favorable, less decisive? We think, on the contrary, 
 that we could have had fine vantage-ground therefrom against 
 our 8 adversaries, and have much more easily and surely shown 
 the superiority and anteriority of Jewish ethics to the Chris- 
 tian, from these sources. There are, doubtless, in the writings 
 of the latter two not to mention the Bible, wherein they abound 
 passages capable in themselves of curbing the whole of the evangeli- 
 cal ethics ; and Mr. Salvador has cited some very eloquent ones, 
 though there were hundreds still. But many reasons led us to the 
 choice we have made. The work we might have performed as to 
 the Bible, the Apocrypha, and Philo, both Jews and Christians have 
 done before us, and better than we could hope to do. These sources, 
 especially the Bible, are much more accessible to all than are the 
 almost unknown writings of the Kabbis. The ethics of the former 
 Christianity will much more readily accept, as long as the Pharisees 
 are regarded as the corrupters of Israel's ethics, and Jesus is believed 
 
 * Vayikra Rabba, XXXTV. t Talmud, Chagiga, fol. 5. 
 
 \ Ibid, Yomi, fol. 9. \ Talmud, Choullin, foL 99, 
 
110 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 to be its glorious restorer. In snorr, il the deplorable prejudices 
 that have at all times hindered the due appreciation of Biblical 
 ethics, are yielding daily to the advance of light and truth, they 
 hold, alas ! yet their old tyrannical sway over men as to the Phari- 
 sees. Consequently justice, truth, and the religious interests of the 
 future forced us to examine what truth there is in opinions accredi- 
 ted at the outset and constantly fostered by that oldest enemy of the 
 Pharisees, Christianity. Alas ! we are forced to say that even among 
 the valiant champions of Judaism, among the bold defenders of its 
 morality we find no one who is not disposed, through some unac- 
 countable condescension, to make enormous concessions, to sacrifice 
 almost totally, the ethics, the rights, the reputation of Pharisaism, 
 to the reigning system of morality, on condition that the rights of 
 the Bible are preserved. With this mournful fact before us, it was 
 reasonable to ask ourselves if actual Judaism, that which recognizes 
 tradition as its guide, as the source of both its ethics and religion 
 if, in a word, Pharisaical Judaism ought to bow its hoary head to 
 this creation of one of its own disciples, of the smallest of its chil- 
 dren the Benjamin of the school and to own that if Jesus had not 
 lived it would have been all over with the purity and spirit of He- 
 brew ethics. To answer this doubt, to end a perplexity that ren- 
 dered modern criticism dumb, was this work undertaken ; to see, in 
 short, if religious Judaism has reason to envy that other historical 
 and philosophical Judaism, which they have dressed up. "We 
 humbly confess that what we have given of the ethics of the Phari- 
 sees, of their ideas and maxims, forms but a very small fraction of 
 the great riches, of the sublime thoughts that the Talmud, the Mid- 
 raschim, the Zohar contain. Mixed throughout these books, in the 
 most irregular manner with lore of all sorts, thoughts of wonderful 
 beauty and elevation arrest the reader at every page. Y7hat we have 
 cited will show, we hope, that the condemnation of the Pharisees 
 cannot be a final one, that a new trial, a new judgment are indispen- 
 sable, and that there has been too much precipitation, when, to fill up 
 the gulf which separated the two religions, the Pharisees were cast 
 in ; the Pharisees, I say, who are truly rather the road, the bridge 
 that criticism should preserve for both. Af ber all we have said, we 
 were grieved and surprised beyond measure to read the words with 
 which Mr. Salvador seemingly desires to lead the way for the pre- 
 tensions of Christian ethics. 
 
 According to him, the Pharisee doctors, "instead of dealing 
 spiritually with the moral precepts of ^he Law, turned them into 
 pure questions of civil right, hampered them with restrictions, multi- 
 plied subtleties; so that before their own exhortafions could influence 
 the mind, the heart had time to freeze and become insensible." 
 

 * 
 
 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHIC& ' ** > Jg 111 
 
 Mr. Salvador sees but one of the two parts played by the Pharisees. 
 They were at once thejiirists and the moralists of Judaism. To jiiclga" 
 of their ethics when they speak law would be as just as to estimate 
 their legislative skill by their ethical teachings. The double char- 
 aster of Judaism deceived Mr. Salvador. No soul in the ethics of 
 the Pharisees ! But what source more pregnant with emotions than 
 this? What touching language; what accents, now pathetic, now 
 terrible or sublime ! We are moved with these venerable doctors 
 we weep for their tears, we rejoice for their joy ; the very play of 
 their imagination, their legends and myths, have something simple, 
 gracious, and child-like, that smiles upon us. No soul in the ethics 
 of the Pharisees ! * Why if it have any defect, it is that it has too 
 much ; their emotion runs to tears, their plaints .are like those of 
 the dove, their pain like the roarings of the lion. This we cannot 
 help seeing. The same illusion, the same inability to see in the 
 Pharisees, the moralists, as well as the jurists, causes Mr. Salvador to 
 add : ' ' Being confined to the minutisB of national and human inter- 
 ests, they took cognizance of external actions only." This, indeed, 
 is monstrous. We must truly say that Mr. Salvador's first blunder 
 in not recognizing the Mosaic system as solely a policy and not at all a 
 religion, has brought about his strange contradictions to the best 
 proven facts. One need not be as well versed as he in Hebrew 
 knowledge to know that the Pharisees, so far from taking cognizance 
 only of external actions, penetrated, on the contrary, into the most 
 private recesses of the human heart, disclosing its weaknesses, its 
 caprices, its most subtle artifices, and demanding purity of thought 
 and sentiment, the curbing of our passions, just as well as obedience 
 to the practical laws, civil or religious. If, performing functions 
 so diverse as those of legislators and of moralists, they kept the law 
 and ethics, each in its distinct and unchanging place, neither en- 
 croaching on the other are they to be reproached by us (chil- 
 dren of the 19th century) with this as a crime ? Will Mr. Salva- 
 dor cast the first stone at them for an act that- constitutes their 
 very glory? The same forgetfulness of the moral role of the 
 Pharisees of the charity that is one of the chief elements of 
 Pharisaical Judaism, has dictated to Mr. Salvador the following 
 words: " To the spirit of justice that shone in the doctrines and 
 genius of Israel, Jesus added the no less precious qualities of sym- 
 pathy and mercy. These old Pharisees would be astonished to learn 
 that mercy and sympathy are the heritage of their young disciple, 
 they who said, The mercy and sympathy ice enjoy with God are the reflec- 
 tion of the mercy and sympathy we enjoy with men; they who have 
 seasoned all their moral teaching with so much poetry, grace, and 
 sentiment I No; in place of saying that Jesus adds to the Hebrew 
 
112 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 ethics mercy and sympathy, an impartial and courageous criticism 
 would have said that he pays not sufficient regard to the spirit of 
 justice. 
 
 Mr. Salvador has characterized the two ethical codes by a simili- 
 tude that is not lacking in originality or truth. He says that the 
 legislative and natural ethics of Moses is man in the full strength 
 and expansion of his faculties ; that the ethics of Jesus is woman 
 woman with her sensibility, grace, and tender yearnings. One trait 
 is wanting to these pictures to make them likenesses ; to both is 
 wanting a stroke of the pencil that the whole face of each may be 
 given. We shall not raise a petty dispute with Mr. Salvador about 
 a legislative ethics, nor about a natural ethics ; we shall not say that 
 to our view the first is as unintelligible as the second if not more so. 
 Nor shall we say that a natural ethics would possess essentially those 
 very characteristics that Mr. Salvador says the Jewish ethics lacks, 
 namely, passion, sentiment, and expansion. We shall only say 
 that Jewish ethics indeed resembles man , but man in his double na- 
 ture ; that is, the primitive man of Moses, the androgyne of Plato, the 
 bisexual man, or rather, man and "woman reunited by marriage; in a 
 word, the family home. Yes, Christian ethics resembles woman, but 
 woman isolated from man, without the counterpoise of his judgment, 
 firmness, and experience ; woman, surrendered to all the impulses of 
 sensibility, tenderness, passion, anger, in short, the cloister. Jewish 
 ethics is justice and charity united, each tempering the other and 
 both working in unison for the government of the grand family, 
 mankind ; the one, having as its- special organ, the written law ; the 
 other represented rather by the oral law \ the one having to deal 
 with society whose interests it governs, the other having its seat 
 rather in the conscience of the individual. Thus Judaism includes 
 the whole man, body and spirit, life actual and life to come ; the 
 first coming from the Mosaic code, the second from tradition, which 
 is the code of conscience. When Mr. Salvador ascribes to Judaism 
 an exclusive worldly-mindedness, thereby contrasting it with Chris- 
 tianity that neglects the interests of this life for those of the next, 
 he leaves out a whole side of Judaism ; this he makes err on the one 
 side, and Christianity on the other ; he decides in favor of those who 
 accuse Judaism of materialism, and accredits the prejudice that the 
 Jew worships material interests all for not bearing sufficiently in 
 mind tradition, for not regarding Pharisaism as one phase of the 
 Mosaic system rather than that system in its entirety. Had he been 
 more orthodox he would have been less assailable. For us, Juda- 
 ism is at once justice and charity, the moral law and the political 
 law, the Mosaic code and tradition. The one is religion for the 
 use of the nation, a collective being that exists in this world only 
 
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 (and hence its apparent materialism) ; the other is the code of con- 
 science, the source of dogmas, principles and hopes that have 
 reference to the human soul (hence its apparent asceticism) . Both 
 together constitute Judaism. 
 
 Is it not the same in dogma ? Does not the family below (as say 
 the Cabalists) reflect for us the family above. Have we not iu 
 dogma also a justice, which is the Word, and a charity, which is 
 the Kingdom ? And what completes the analogy is, that the first is 
 called the written Law, the second the oral Law. Who can doubt that 
 the Cabalists perceived the distinction and the different roles that 
 we have indicated? Christian ethics is but charity, the celibate 
 woman, the devotee, the nun, with all her virtues and vices, her 
 delusions and passions ; but as cabalistic Charity, separated from its 
 spouse (the Word, Justice] , is ruined by its very excess being less 
 than just through its being only charitable so Christian charity, 
 having rejected its natural comrade, justice, is condemned to assume 
 the duty of the latter, no longer according to the fixed laws of jus- 
 tice, but after the impulses, the caprices of love and passion, that 
 sometimes impose on their object what they ignorantly take to be 
 salvation, glory, and happiness. 
 
 The way we understand the Jewish and the Christian ethics 
 is this ; instead of saying with Mr. Salvador that the first is man, 
 the second, woman, we say, the first is the conjugal state, the fam- 
 ily, man in his entirety ; the other is a recluse, a devotee, woman 
 without the counterpoise of husband. And this too is how ethics, 
 in its final consequences, connects itself with the speculative side of 
 both religions how Ethics is but Dogma itself presiding over the 
 government of the conscience and the destinies of nations. 
 
DOCTRINES AND ETHICS 
 
 ISLAMISM 
 
MOHAJV1MEDISM: 
 
 ITS DOCTRINE. 
 
 In an investigation of the influence that Judaism has had upon 
 subsequent religions, we cannot but take notice of one other sys- 
 tem which has left a deep and durable trace in human history we 
 allude to Islamism. The natural limits of the task we have under- 
 taken, as well as those of the time at our command, compel us to 
 restrict ourselves to a narrower circle than we should otherwise 
 have kept. We do not, therefore, enter upon a general examination 
 of Islamism, nor of the different theological or philosophical schools 
 it has begot ; we treat briefly only of that great branch which con- 
 nects it with Judaism, and of its numerous and important kindred 
 sprays. 
 
 Let us first take, from a suitable hight, a general review of this 
 religion ; let us ask what is the main impression it produces on the 
 mind of an impartial observer ; what are the links that connect it 
 with Judaism, and, perhaps, with Christianity also, 
 
 We have proved, the reader will remember, that, of the two 
 interests embraced by Judaism the future life and the present one, 
 or, (to use a Cabalistic expression) the superior mother and the infe- 
 rior mother Christianity selected exclusively the former, disdaining 
 and neglecting the present life and its manifest concerns. Much 
 more : we have seen how Christianity, when obliged to postpone 
 the new resurrectional era it preached as impending, and to con- 
 cern itself about the imperious needs of the present life, always 
 subordinated those needs, and the interests of the actual world, to 
 that fictitious, imaginary world of the resurrection, whither Christ- 
 ians thought themselves transplanted, in spirit at least, if not in 
 body. 
 
 Judaism, ever mutilated, ever deprived of that element connecting 
 it with this life, namely, of the body, the family, society, country; 
 of life, in short, in all its various aspects ! Ever the exclusive cul- 
 ture of the spiritual side of Judaism, of faith proper, of the indi- 
 vidual conscience, in which man, despising the fore-named relations 
 of the present life, shuts himself up and intrenches himself 1 
 
4 MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTEINE. 
 
 A phenomenon, just the reverse of this, awaits us in Islamism. 
 It is the other side of Judaism, the one abandoned by Jesus, that 
 Mahomet selects for his chief principle, for the corner-stone of his 
 system. 
 
 If Jesus fastened on the most esoteric, the most spiritual doctrines 
 of Judaism, bringing, from the depths of the sanctuary, the most 
 abstruse metaphysics, to construct from it a religion for the million, 
 imperiling, by the abuse of this esoteric theology, the very unity of 
 God that popular Monotheism which checked the nights of every 
 audacious spirit imperiling this, we say, by his theory of persons, 
 it is quite the opposite defect that we have in primitive Islamism. 
 
 The Arabian prophet so little conversant with the rabbinical lit- 
 erature in which Jesus excelled, so far from Palestine and, above all, 
 from that time and society of which Jesus was the product, when the 
 Hebrew mind was in a state of ferment to find some central point of 
 thought, when speculations jostled each other on all sides, and in- 
 tellectual development had reached the zenith of power and produc- 
 tiveness Mahomet could see only what struck every eye, what all 
 could comprehend, what the Jews bore everywhere with them, viz, 
 external Monotheism ; and this, accordingly, was the solitary and 
 supreme dogma of his religion. If Jesus took from Judaism its 
 moral, interior and spiritual side, and thereby showed himself the 
 disciple of the Pharisees rather than of Moses, Mahomet, on the 
 other hand, took from it its social and worldly side, and thereby 
 attached himself to the Bible and to Moses rather than to tradition 
 and the Pharisees. In short, if Christianity carried the principles 
 and rules of a future life into the very midst of the present one, if 
 it effaced and absorbed in the world to come the present world, 
 imposing upon the latter the conditions of eternity, it is precisely 
 the antithesis of this doctrine which we get from Mahomet. Ho 
 fashions and regulates the world to come after the model of our 
 present life, whose pains, pleasures, passions, caprices, etc. he 
 transfers to the future state, wherein is nought but a prolongation, 
 a repetition of man's life here-below. Islamism, by excluding the 
 spiritual side of Judaism, has barbarized its polity; Christianity, 
 by soaring beyond the social life of Judaism, has transformed its 
 religion into ascetism. In both cases is Judaism mutilated deprived 
 of one of its essential members. 
 
 This recognition, however, of the most striking characteristics ol 
 Mohammedism has, from our stand-point, a value, inasmuch as ii 
 implies some real and historical transplanting of Jewish doctrines 
 into the new religion of Arabia. Are these grafts possible ? The 
 sequel will prove, we think, that they have actually taken place ; 
 the traces of Judaism, and of even Pharisaism will clearly appear 
 
MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. D 
 
 in each detail, belief and precept of the religion of Mahomet, and 
 in a manner so peculiar, so exact, as to leave no doubt possible. 
 Now, let us see if external conditions and the relative situation 
 of the Jews to Mahomet allow us to suppose this transplanting 
 (incontestible in any case) , and whether or not these relations be of 
 a character to warrant such an hypothesis. 
 
 What do we see in Arabia, in the time of and close to the per- 
 son of Mahomet ? We see the Jews peopling in great numbers those 
 countries where Mahomet's name was about to echo, and bearing 
 with them that religion which, during their exile, is not to leave 
 them again ; and, what is much more, we see their credit constantly 
 increasing, their influence and, therefore, their religion becoming 
 dominant. History attests, in the most formal manner, that several 
 princes and tribes embraced the religion of Israel. Mahomet now 
 conceives his bold scheme of reform. Will he forget the potent aids 
 that are within his reach ? Far from it ; as to Judaism, reckoning 
 as it did so many adepts among Arabia's most distinguished chil- 
 dren, he has nought but advances to make, and thinks he cannot 
 treat with too much consideration those formidable rivals ; he wil* 
 adopt a great number of their opinions, their doctrines, their cus- 
 toms, seeking thereby to range them, if possible, on his side. Vain 
 efforts ! These faithful Israelites will never renounce one part of 
 their religion, even though it were to see the other adopted by the 
 prophet of Araby; and the world shall have a new religion modeled 
 somewhat after Judaism, without this last ceasing to be what it has 
 been, or that fountain being sullied at which other generations shall 
 quench their thirst. Whatever results Mahomet may have expected 
 from these Hebrew grafts, these have ever been recognized as such 
 by every serious historian of Islamism. Has not an influence still 
 more direct and continuous been brought to bear upon it ! History 
 tells us of the Jew Abdalla, who, as his secretary, was close to Ma- 
 homet's person, and who, if we mistake not, was authorized by the 
 cotemporary Eabbis (as their books attest) to co-operate with Ma- 
 homet in the religious reform of Arabia. And who can say that the 
 purity and elegance of style which is observable in the Koran and 
 from which Mahomet takes an argument for his inspiration, have not 
 flowed from a Hebrew pen ? On this point, no weak testimony is 
 that of Judaism's two great enemies, viz, of Christians and of Ma- 
 homet's cotemporaries. Now both recognized the hand of a stranger 
 with Mahomet in the composition of the Koran, and it was, as 
 Christians declare, that of the Jew Abdalla, and of the Monk Seryius. 
 The Koran itself lends force to this opinion, entertained since the 
 time of Mahomet. There are two passages in the book that allude 
 to the point, and both testify equally, I think, in favor of Hebrew 
 
6 MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTKINE. 
 
 co-operation. In the 25th Chap. Mahomet exclaims, " The incredu- 
 lous say : What is this book, but a lie that he has forged ? Others, 
 
 too, have helped him to make it they are but the myths 
 
 of antiquity he hears these things morning and evening." 
 
 Could he so express himself respecting doctrines that were not of 
 Jewish origin ? And in Chap. 16th : " We know well the incredu- 
 lous say : Some person teaches Mahomet. For the language of him 
 whom they would impose on us is barbarian, and you see that the 
 Koran is an Arabic book, clear and intelligible." Here the portrait 
 becomes more definite and the Jewish type comes out more plainly. 
 The doubt refers to some one who spoke a barbarian tongue. Now, 
 who could this be but a Jew ? A monk, even, could suit badly this 
 portrait ; for his language, ordinary or religious, would have always 
 been Arabic, and nothing but Arabic. 
 
 Before entering on an examination of the doctnnes and precepts 
 of Islamism, let us mark, as we go, some circumstances in the life 
 of Mahomet, evidently copied from Jewish history, either by Ma- 
 homet himself, an imitator and plagiarist of ancient narratives, or 
 by his historians. The cave to which he retires, the choice which 
 he makes of his twelve chief disciples, recall to mind, the one, the 
 retreat of Moses and Elias, the other the choice of the twelve 
 Princes of Israel, imitated by Jesus in the election of twelve apos- 
 tles. But what especially attests the action of Pharisaical doctrine 
 and tradition upon the history of Islamism is that spider that comes 
 so opportunely to cover with his web the entrance to the cave to 
 which Mahomet betook himself to escape the pursuit of the Kor- 
 eish, just as the Rabbis tell us how David was hidden from Saul, 
 by a spider that spun his web across the entrance of the grotto, 
 that David might be undeceived as to the uselessness of the spider, 
 as he was, subsequently, at the Court of Achis, respecting the inu- 
 tility of madness. And such a perfect harmony with the details 
 of Pharasaical tradition is not the least proof that this is the model 
 from which the anecdote of Mahomeirs life is taken. 
 
 The doctrine and precepts of Islamism are contained chiefly in 
 the Koran. Now, what is the Koran? This word is evidently 
 derived from the verb Kara, to read, and therefore signifies, reading, 
 what ought to be read, and is but an imitation of the word mi-karah, 
 that Judaism has given to the Bible, each term being applied, sev- 
 erally to designate not only the whole sacred volume, but also, a 
 section, a verse, or even a word of the special religion. But the 
 Jews apply other names still to the different parts of the Bible and 
 of the Pentateuch, and that of Parascha (division) is one not the 
 least ancient. Now, does not the Koran reproduce this appellation 
 in the term El Fjrkan, (the divisions) , taken evidently not only from 
 
MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 7 
 
 the Ptrek or Pirka of the Rabbis, as Mr. Sale asserts, but from the 
 analogous divisions of the Bible, called Parascha? And what, even 
 are the Soioars or sections of the Koran but the Sedarin into which 
 the Pentateuch is divided ? Shall we esteem the other Arabic names 
 of the Koran more original, El Moshaf (the book) , El Kitab* (the 
 scripture) ? They are but the translation of the Hebrew words 
 Seplier and Kitbe haccodesch, applied to the Pentateuch, or to other 
 parts of the Scriptures. The same precautions taken by the Rabbis 
 to preserve the purity of Scripture have been adopted for the Koran, 
 and the verses, words, letters even of the Koran, as of the Bible, 
 have been counted, and they have likewise reckoned how many 
 times eacH letter in the Koran occurs. Is not this pure Rabbinism ? 
 But this is not all. At the head of certain chapters of the Koran, 
 we remark certain meaningless letters, the signification of which 
 Mussulmen themselves do not know. Yet, how are they interpreted ? 
 In two ways, both equally Rabbinical, the Notaricon and the Ghem- 
 a'ria ; that is, by taking them at one time as the initials of certain 
 words, and, at another, by calculating their numerical value, and 
 supposing an allusion to other words of similar numerical value. 
 
 But, what to our view is most significant, is the idea Mahomedan 
 orthodoxy entertains of the inspiration of the Koran, one altogether 
 analogous not only to what exoteric Judaism but to what the Caba- 
 lists teach on this subject which strongly implies the existence 
 of the Cabala in those remote times. The Arabs consider the 
 Koran not only a divine revelation in the sense that it is the work of 
 God, but in a more metaphysical one, namely, that the thoughts 
 therein constitute the eternal mind of God, and are his word, his 
 L')-jos ; that they exist, as some say, in the divine essence ; that the 
 first copy of the Koran has been from all eternity at the throne 
 of God. written on a vast table that contains his decrees as to 
 the past and future. Is not this Hebrew doctrine uttered by the 
 Arabs? Exoteric Judaism had been very explicit. " The Zorah," 
 it says, is the model after which God " created the world ; it is but 
 one leaf dropped from the eternal wisdom, the instrument God used 
 in his six days work." But how conclusive is the exoteric doctrine ! 
 We have already seen, when treating of Christianity, that the He- 
 brew Verbum is the written law, and that its spouse, the Kingdom, 
 is tradition. But what is now very important to remark, is. that 
 both these laws, scripture and tradition, the Verbum and the King- 
 dom, are identified in a higher degree in the scale of emanations, in 
 that superior Wisdom called simply the eternal Law, Tora Kedouma. 
 of which, when divided, the written and the oral Law are but the 
 two parts. But the Arabian doctrine sees, in the eternal text of the 
 
 * Pure Hebrew also; the, singular of Kitte. 
 
8 MOFAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 
 
 Koran, the " table of destiny." Is not this, word for word, what the 
 Cabala teaches us ? Is it not this same wisdom, this same eternal 
 Law, which is called destiny, fate, although in a very different sense 
 from the Mahometan fatalism ? We can but glance at this subject 
 now. Let those more favored than we extend this curious parallel ; 
 we shall be content to have broached the subject. 
 
 It is unquestionable that the doctrine we ascribe to the Arabs has 
 ever been the most accredited among the orthodox ; that if the sect 
 of Montazales rejected it, from the fear of admitting two deities, it 
 was from not well understanding this ancient doctrine, the true mean- 
 ing of which Al-Ghazali has established in saying that if we speak 
 what is contained in the Koran, if it is written in books -and stored 
 in the memory, it is nevertheless eternal, because it subsists in the 
 essence of God from which it cannot be parted by any transmission 
 to men. 
 
 If we ask what Islamism thinks of the interpretation of its holy 
 writings, we shall find it to be exactly what the Pharisees and the 
 Cabalists have taught respecting that of the Bible. Needless to say 
 that they, too, carefully distinguish the literal from the spiritual 
 interpretation. But what is noteworthy, is the image by which a 
 celebrated Arab (El Jahed) distinguished these two senses of Scrip- 
 ture. He said that the Koran is a body which can change itself at 
 one time into a man, at another into an animal, or, as others express 
 it, that this book has two faces one, that of a man, the other, that 
 of an animal. Can we not see in this a trace of the old distinction 
 made by the Psychics and the Pneumatics, between the different 
 classes of the faithful and readers of the Bible one just made by 
 the Cabalists, and after them, as we have elsewhere noticed, by the 
 Christians and Gnostics ? 
 
 We lay no stress on the respect and veneration with which the 
 Arabs regard their books. Every religion claims this from its adhe- 
 rents, and in this is no special trace of Judaism or its traditions. 
 But must we not remark the use the Arabs have ever made of them ? 
 When some important occasion requires a decisive course of action, 
 the Koran is consulted. The book is opened, and omens are taken 
 from the first words that present themselves. Is not this what the 
 oldest Pharisaism has done ? We shall not speak of the custom of 
 modern Jews. But the Talmud brings this mode of consulting the 
 future as far back as the days of Josias, when it tells us of the ter- 
 ror of this King on reading in the Pentateuch, half opened by him, 
 that prediction of Moses which condemns the King and the nation to 
 exile, as a punishment for their sins.* The example of the Essenes, 
 of which^ Joseph tells us, those of the Pharisees with which the 
 
 * Talm. Youma. fol. 52, 
 
MOHAJOIEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 9 
 
 Talmud abounds, prove that omens were taken from verses -of the 
 Bible, read or recited by children, either spontaneously or by 
 request. 
 
 But enough of the Koran, and of the opinion entertained respect- 
 ing it by the Arabs. It is time we should speak of the contents of 
 the book, that is, of Islamism. This religion is divided by Arabic 
 theologians into two parts, which give the essential elements of all 
 religions, the /man, or the dogma, faith, theory, and the Din, 
 or the Law and its precepts. Islamism, as a whole, recognizes five 
 main articles, of which only one belongs to the dogma, or Iman, 
 the rest to the Din, or to worship and practice. 
 
 The former is the confession of faith which every Mussulman 
 consider as the summary of his religion, viz : " There is no God but 
 the true God, and Mahomet is his messenger." But this article 
 includes six distinct elements : 1. Belief in God. 2. Belief in his 
 angels. 3. Belief in his scriptures. 4. Belief in his prophets. 
 5. Belief in the resurrection and judgment-day. 6. Belief in the 
 absolute decrees of God, and in the predestination of good and 
 evil. 
 
 The four articles, including worship and practice, are : 1. Prayer. 
 2. Alms. 3. Fasting. 4. Pilgrimage to Mecca. Let us examine 
 briefly, in succession, these articles of the Mussulman faith, and let 
 us trace, if possible, that Judao-Pharisaical influence which we 
 have already pointed out in the few preceding observations. 
 
 It will suffice here to recall what we have said respecting the 
 unity of God, so prominent in Islamism, namely, that the doctrine 
 is pure exoteric Judaism untempered by religious metaphysics, just 
 as the Christian Trinity, on the other hand, is this very metaphy- 
 sics, separated from what always controls its scientific march and 
 development, namely, from popular monotheism. So that Judaism 
 has been, if we may so speak, cut in two at the birth of its two 
 children, each bearing away the half of its doctrine, and making 
 of that half an exclusive creed. 
 
 The doctrine of the Koran as to angels is, that they have a pure 
 and rarefied body, created by fire ; that they neither eat nor drink ; 
 that they have no need of propagation by marriage; that they have 
 different occupations and modes of serving God some singing His 
 praises; others interceding for the human race; others writing the 
 actions of men ; others carrying the heavenly throne. But the 
 greatest of all are Gabriel (also called the Holy Spirit) , Michael, 
 the friend and protector of the Jews, Azrael, the Angel of Death, 
 and Israfel, the trumpet-blower at the judgment-day. Have we not 
 in this description the most marked traits of Pharisaical angel- 
 ology, nay, of the most special doctrines of Cabalistic Pharisaism? 
 
10 MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 
 
 That the bodies of angels consisted of an ethereal matter was <me 
 of the most characteristic opinions of this school; it was openly 
 professed by a great number of the Church Fathers ; it is, we will 
 affirm, at the root of many systems of ancient or modern philosophy 
 (above all as to what concerns the human soul, which they believed 
 invested with a very subtile body) . This body is a fire, according 
 to the Psalms and the Talmud.* Each angel has one certain office, 
 from which comes his name. Those who intercede for men are 
 called Paracletin.f According to the Talmud, Elias writes down the 
 actions of men ; and, according to others, it is Gabriel who does 
 this duty, as the prophet Ezekiel tells us, giving us all the marks of 
 the scribe 4 Need we say that the task of carrying the throne of 
 God, assigned to the angels, is as old as this prophet himself? 
 But we are obliged to go to the Cabala for information (to be sought 
 for in vain in exoteric Judaism) respecting that quaternity of angels 
 who preside over the whole celestial army, called in Islamism Ga- 
 briel, Michael, Azrael, and Israfel. "Where find this, if not in the 
 Cabala ? It alone recognized these four archangels, who surpass all 
 others in dignity and power, and who command the four cohorts of 
 the Schechina, and the names of the first two are exactly the same as 
 in the Hebrew creed. As to Azrael, no doubt it comes from the 
 Azazel of Moses, the angel to whom God devoted the scape-goat on 
 the day of Atonement the Azael of the Talmud and the Zohar.f 
 Should the name of the last (Israfel) be a reminiscence of that 
 ancient doctrine, that the world must end by a general combustion, 
 as it arose from the same? The Hebrew root (saraph, to burn) 
 leads us to think so. However that be, one stone evidently taken 
 from the great Cabalistic edifice is the term Holy-Spirit given to 
 Gabriel. How explain this singular identity in the doctrines ? Is 
 it not the malkhout that bears the name Gabriel ? And is not this 
 also called Holy-Spirit ? Why then do not these names always go 
 together, since they represent but one and the same being ? We just 
 now said that the Azrael of the Koran was probably the Mosaic Aza- 
 zel. Is proof wanted ? According to Mahomet the Devil (Eblis) , 
 bore before his fall the name Azazel. Is he not clearly the same 
 as the Angel of Death, Azrael ? True, two beings are formed from 
 him, but is it not simply the doubling of the Mosaic angel (Azrael) , 
 while he fills his office, and Azazel under his primitive name, before 
 the Fall ? 
 
 And as to this Fall how did it happen ? Here, the Pharisaical 
 ideas are made quite manifest. According to the Pharisees, the 
 greatest of the angels was seized with a violent jealousy of man, 
 
 * Ps. civ. Talmud Chagiga, fol. 13, 14. t Ib. Shabbath, fol. 32, and Baba Bathra, fol. 10. 
 % Eztkiel. ix. Tal. Ydma, fol. 67 and Zohar, sec. Bereshith. 
 
MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 11 
 
 Adam, whom all creatnres obeyed, and to whom the angels them- 
 selves ministered. He took the form of a serpent, seduced the 
 woman, and was the cause of sin and death. Then the curse pro- 
 nounced against the serpent, took effect upon man also, and he fell 
 from his first splendor. According to Mahomet, ' * when God ordered 
 the angels to adore Adam, all obeyed, except Eblis (the Devil) ; he, 
 filled with pride, refused, and was counted among the ungrateful.'* 
 But this is not all ; before the creation of man, as well as afte"r his 
 fall, Mahomet comes as close as possible to the Pharisees. Their 
 tradition speaks of God consulting the angels before the creation of 
 man, and of their response eminently adverse to this creation. 
 Now, is not this what we read in the second chapter of the Koran ? 
 The Pharisees mention the penitence of Adam, and especially the 
 prayer he was to pronounce in honor of the Sabbath. Now the 
 Koran says expressly that God taught Adam a prayer, and that Ha 
 accepted his repentance. 
 
 Besides the angels, the Koran mentions an intermediate order of 
 beings, whom the Arabs call Djinn, or genii. This classification is 
 exactly analogous to the Scliedim, whom the Pharisees admit. Their 
 description is faithfully echoed by that of Mahomet. According to 
 the Pharisees, they are similar to men in three respects ; as to foodt 
 propagation and death ;* and this is, word for word, what Mahome, 
 teaches. He divides them into the good and the bad, thinks they 
 can be saved and damned, like men, and that his mission includes 
 their conversion also. This is, in other terms, what the Pharisees 
 say of the ScJiedim, keepers also of the law of Moses, who were sur- 
 prised by men just as they were praying. From even the deepest 
 strata of the rabbinical myths has Mahomet plagiarized, perhaps 
 because the Pharisaism that surrounded and acted upon him was of 
 that legendary character that entertains the people especially with 
 wonderful stories. 
 
 After these remarks upon the Koran, and the mode of under- 
 standing it, we need say but little upon the second point of the 
 Mussulman faith, belief in the Scriptures. Let us merely add, 
 that besides the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospel which they 
 receive just as do Jews and Christians (though believing these books 
 to be much corrupted by both) , they suppose anterior books to have 
 existed, of which exoteric Judaism makes no mention, but which are 
 forever celebrated in the mysterious doctrines of the Jews. Where, 
 if not from this source, could Mahomet have learned that there were 
 books such as that revealed to Adam ( Sffra deadam harischon) , those 
 of Seth, Enoch and Abraham, books which the Koran speaks of as 
 having existed, thpugh thought now to be utterly lost ? Now the 
 * Talmud duffl^a, foL 14. 
 
12 MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 
 
 "whole ancient Babbinical library (except the Zohar) makes continual 
 mention of those books. From the same source we think Mahomet 
 took the belief in the inspiration of certain patriarchs as Adam, 
 Seth, Heber, Enoch, who, by no means get this quality from tho 
 Mosaic writings, but receive it in some degree from Talmudical 
 Pharisaism, and then still more from the Zohar and the Cabala 
 where their inspiration is regarded as complete. 
 
 Before speaking of the last article of Arab faith, the resurrection 
 of the dead, we shall say a few words about the state preceding 
 that event. When one is laid in the tomb, two angels, Monkir and 
 Nakir, examine him upon his orthodoxy and conduct. If the an- 
 swers are satisfactory, the body is allowed to rest in peace and be 
 refreshed by the air of Paradise ; but if the answers are otherwise, 
 the deceased is struck on the temples with iron rods, till his cries 
 are heard from east to west. Then they press the earth upon the 
 body, which is gnawed by ninety dragons. What Jew has not heard 
 of the Chibbout hakeber, the flagellation of the tomb. When the angel 
 of death sits upon the sepulchre, the soul enters the corpse and lifts 
 it to its feet ; then the angel examines the deceased and strikes him 
 with a chain, half of iron, half of fire, so that at the first blow all 
 the limbs are disjointed ; at the second, the bones are destroyed ; 
 and at the third tho body is reduced to dust and ashes. Is not this 
 the picture that Islamism has copied for the use of the Arabs ? 
 
 The state of the soul after its separation from the body, gives us 
 a subject requiring still more study and thought. It is impossible 
 not to recognize herein the ideas of the Cabala in their parabolic or 
 legendary form, c&e which brought them within the comprehension 
 of all and transformed them into a capricious mythology, fascinating 
 for the imagination of the people. Let us see what they teach. 
 There are, on this subject, divers opinions among the Arabs, but, 
 when properly viewed, they are only so many symbols detached from 
 the great body of Cabalistic symbolism, all bearing the truest stamp, 
 and concealing under faces the most divers, one identical doctrine. 
 According to some, souls keep generally near sepulchres ; and this 
 is what the Cabalists tell us concerning the Nefcsch, which rarely 
 leaves its body, and especially about the Habala degarme, " the 
 breath of the bones," which never leaves it. According to others, 
 souls are with Adam in the lowest heaven, those destined for Para- 
 dise on the right, and those for hell on the left. Is not this a para- 
 phrase of the Cabalistic dogmas ? For these inform us that all human 
 souls are contained in Adam, some in his head, some in his arms, 
 others in his breast, and so on ; and especially that the last heaven, 
 the Vdon, Malkhout, is tho seat of souls ; the good on the right, the 
 wicked on tho left. 
 
: ITS DOCTRINE. 13 
 
 A third opinion of the Arabs is that the souls of the just are pre- 
 served in the water-founts Zemzem, those of the wicked in the pit 
 Brohut. Is not this the same doctrine under another form, the sym- 
 bolism of which is more precise and marked ? This Velon, or Malk- 
 hout, bears the significant name B",er of living water, expressed in 
 the history of the desert by " the wells of Miriam." But what is 
 less known, though no less interesting, is that while the seat of 
 the blessed is called Beer, its counterpart, the diabolic kingdom, 
 the seat of the wicked, is called by the slightly different name Bor, 
 pit, which is one of the names of hell. Can we have a closer, a 
 more evident, analogy? According to others, souls stay seven days 
 near the tombs, though it is not known what then becomes of them. 
 The Zohar tells us : " During seven days the soul comes and goes 
 from the torrb to its house, and from its house to the tomb ; after 
 seven days the body remains as it is, and the soul goes where it 
 goes. "* This is not all. The Arabs have another opinion very strange 
 and curious, but which is repeated with singular exactness by the 
 Cabalistic formula. Understand, if you can, what the Arabs mean by 
 saying that ' ' souls are in the trumpet, at the sound of which the dead 
 shall rise." But connect these words with the Cabalistic symbols, 
 and how clear becomes the sense ! "We have but to remember that 
 the spirit, the intellect proper, NESCHAMA, has its seat in the BINA, 
 "the superior mother;" that this Eon, this Sephira bears as its 
 most legitimate name, SCHOPHABGADOII, "the grand trumpet;" and 
 lastly, that at the sound of this trumpet the dead must rise. Were 
 we not right in saying that these doctrines are the light-centre that 
 explains the two greatest religious derivations Christianity and 
 Islamism ? 
 
 It is time we should allude to the resurrection itself. Here 
 Pharisaical analogies abound. The bone called el-alb or the 
 coccyx, which, according to Mahomet, will remain incorrupt to 
 the last day, as a seed or leaven to renew the whole body, is the 
 same as the bone looz of the Pharisees, which is to play the samo 
 part on the resurrection-day. The rain of forty days, which Ma- 
 homet says will make bodies germ like plants, is the dew which 
 the Pharisees say shall fall to revive the dust of the tombs, as the 
 morning dew revives the flowers. 
 
 We shall say nothing of the signs that are to herald this great 
 day signs taken now from the Bible, now from the Doctors ; of the 
 marks that the faithful and the wicked shall bear on their faces, imi- 
 tated from Ezekiel ; of the Hebrew Messiah transformed by Islam- 
 ism into Antichrist ; of the irruption of the Yadjoudj and Madjoudj, 
 the Gog and Magog of the Jews, with all the circumstances attend - 
 
 Zob*r, section VJiychi 
 
H MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTRINE. 
 
 ing their advent given by Ezekiel ; of the triple sound of the trum- 
 pet, modeled from all the official sounds of Judaism, always triple; 
 of the kind of dress with which the dead shall rise from their 
 tombs, and which the Talmud* had already assigned them, in the 
 gracious parable of "the grain of wheat which is sown naked, and 
 buds clad in splendid attire." But what should arrest us for a mo- 
 ment is the part the sun plays in this great day. The Pharisees had 
 said : There is no Hell in the world to come, but the sun shall leave 
 his sheath, burning the wicked and comforting the just. One of 
 the great sufferings of the wicked, as Islamism in its turn teaches, 
 will bo a great sweat, produced not only by the great concourse of 
 beings, but especially by the nearness of the sun, which shall then be 
 distant only a MiLE.f The just will be secured from this. evil, dwel- 
 ling " under the shade of the throne of God." It is impossible not 
 to recognize in this the impress of Pharisaism. But a still more 
 important analogy, is the justification which the soul and the body 
 shall plead in that great day, each trying to shift the responsibility 
 of its evil deeds upon the other. " O, Lord," the soul will say, 
 " I received from thee my body, because thou didst create me with- 
 out hands to seize anything, without feet to walk, eyes to see or ears 
 to hear, until I entered into the body; that, therefore, thou shouldst 
 punish eternally." And on the other hand, the body : " Lord, thou 
 didst create me like a stick of wood, unable to use my eyes to see, 
 or my feet and hands to act, until this soul came to animate me; 
 then my tongue began to speak, my eves to see, etc ; pun- 
 ish, therefore, this soul eternally." Is not this the question that 
 Marcus Aurelius proposed to Juda the Holy, as the Talmud relates? t 
 What is God's reply, according to Islamism? The same exactly 
 as that given by Juda the Holy. Then comes the apologue of the 
 blind man and the paralytic, who having got into the fruit garden 
 of the King, excused themselves by alleging, each, his impotence. 
 In their narration, as in ours, God puts the paralytic upon the back 
 of the blind man, judges them and punishes them in this position. 
 So astonishing a conformity of ideas and images between Mahomet 
 and the Talmud could scarcely be due to chance. 
 
 We -shall but name other ideas and images common to both reli- 
 gions. The books that will be produced at the last day, the scales 
 
 * Sanhedrim, fol. 90. % $ Ibid, fol. 91. 
 
 t Our readers may smilo at this as an absurdity. Let them remember, however, that 
 this describes an "evil 1 'and abnormal condition of things ; and secondly, that they 
 should have littlo difficulty in accepting this, if they can credit the modern teaching that 
 our sun is ninety-five million miles distant (and stationary !), and that our cumbrous earth 
 is traveling at a speed (nearly twenty miles a second !) which, if true, would annihilate all 
 animal lift, at least on its surface. 
 
% MOHA3MEDIS3f ITS DOCTKINE.. 15 
 
 in which actions-will be weighed, the bridge of Hell over which 
 men are to pass, belonged to Pharisaism long before they figured in 
 the Koran.* But these images are too deeply founded in man's 
 spiritual nature to derive an argument from them. What best merits 
 our attention is rather whatever is arbitrary and capricious as to 
 places, as to the duration and nature of rewards and punishments ; 
 for if a resemblance between the religions in such matters be shown, 
 it must have great weight for an impartial critic. Now we can with 
 confidence affirm that in these respects the conformity is most strik- 
 ing. If the Koran makes seven degrees in Hell, the Pharisees give 
 it the same divisions ;f if its custody is entrusted to angels, if the 
 damned confess the justice of God's judgment, if their tortures 
 consist sometimes in an excess of heat, sometimes in an excess of 
 cold, if those tortures are to have an end, these ideas are all in 
 the most celebrated Pharisaical writings, with the exception of the 
 last, wherein they give themselves the advantage and the copyist has 
 deviated from his model. For while with the Pharisees the limita- 
 tion of punishment is a general law, applicable to both Jews and 
 Pagans, with the Mussulmen it is confined to believers, and eternal 
 punishment reserved for infidels and idolaters. J 
 
 Islamism is no less indebted to Pharisaism for its description of 
 Paradise. The latter locates it in the seventh heaven, called Araboth, 
 at the foot of God's throne, which the Cabalists designate by the 
 Sephira, the exact Eon of Malkhout, called Throne of God, Paradise, 
 and Gan Eden, the seat, as we have said, of souls. \ Islamism 
 teaches that Paradise is situated in the seventh heaven, immedi- 
 ately beneath the Throne of God ; the pearls and hyacinths with 
 which it is paved^its walls of gold and silver, its pomegranates, 
 grapes, and dates, of exquisite taste and perfume, its viands, its birds 
 all prepared, the silk robes which the earth shall produce, are all 
 modeled from Biblical and Rabbinical descriptions. The future 
 Jerusalem, the Paradise or celestial kingdom of the Cabalists, shall 
 be, according to the prophets, full of these wonders ; its pavements, 
 walls and windows of silver, gold and precious stones. We read in 
 the Talmud that an incredulous disciple saw with his own eyes 
 angels cutting precious stones of an enormous size ; and the Rab- 
 binical legends tell us that the earth shall produce in the days of 
 the Messiah cakes and silk dresses ready made. Nor are the rivers 
 forgotten : These, Mahomet says, shall be of water, milk, wine-and 
 honey. Exactly what the Haggada, the popular legends of tha 
 
 * Yalkont Shimoni, foL 153, and Sanhedrim. 
 
 t Ibid. Shimoni, Eroubin, fol. 19, and Zohar, Vol. ii, Ch. xxv: S. 
 
 t Ibid. Shimoni, foL 86 and 116; Zohar, 11, 19; Eroubin, foL 19. 
 
 | Talmtid Twiith, fol. 25; Chagiffi, Ch. ii. - 
 
16 /MOHAMMEDISM ITS DOCTBINK 
 
 Pharisees, teaches.* One kind only, that plays a great part in eso* 
 teric Judaism and especially in the Zohar, is forgotten viz, the 
 rivers of balm. As a compensation, Mahomet promises his followers 
 "girls with large black eyes " (Hour el-oyn) , who may have a remote 
 relationship to the Alamoth (virgins) , a name given by the Cabal- 
 ists to souls detached from their bodies. 
 
 But what recalls us, beyond dispute, to the Pharisaical sources is 
 the idea that God will give the blessed strength to enjoy his favors, 
 so that they shall not sink under them; a noble and pure idea as it 
 came from the Doctors, but one which Mahomet has degraded to the 
 grossest instincts of the Arab race. It would be, however, unjust 
 to deny that Mahomet is better than his disciples; for if the enjoy- 
 ments he promises them are such as a good man would not covet 
 here-below, he has rewards which he esteems far above all sensual 
 pleasures, such as to view the face of God every evening and morn- 
 ing, one for which (as Al-Ghazali remarks) all the other pleasures 
 of Paradise will be forgotten. 
 
 To finish with the dogmas of Mahomet, we have but a word to 
 say upon predestination, or the eternal decrees of God as to the 
 fate of men and their works. Singular destiny of moral liberty ! 
 Without an asylum or assured protection in the midst of ancient 
 Paganism, we might yet have thought that the products of that reli- 
 gion which said: " I put life and good, death and evil, before you, 
 choose then life,"f would have a little better respected God's gift, 
 the power by which man most resembles his Creator. Vain hope ! 
 In the transmission of the Jewish dogmas to subsequent religions, the 
 first that suffered and was sunk in the wreck of Judaism, was /re- 
 will, liberty. Is it then fated that the people who " struggled with 
 God and with men,"| shall be the born-guardian of all liberties? 
 Impossible to deny it : in Christianity, as well as in Islamism, by 
 violent death or by lingering consumption, liberty has perished. 
 The former stifled it softly, noiselessly, by dint of favors, favors 
 anticipatory, efficacious, irresistible, favors of every kind and shade, 
 till liberty finally sunk under the weight of so many benefits. It 
 was killed in the name of the goodness of God, which, nevertheless, 
 never shone higher than when God, limiting man's power, yet said 
 to him : Be free ! Islamism, on the other hand, has killed it with a 
 single blow, as its Califs and Sultans cut off heads with the cimeter; 
 it has killed it in the name of the knowledge of God, which, never- 
 theless, is never so great, of Ms power, which is never so powerful 
 as when, superior to itself, it limits its own action. 
 
 Need we say that Pharisaism is free from these excesses ? We say 
 designedly, Pharisaism, Judaism; for none other has kept the proper 
 
 * Yaik'c-ut Ebimoni Deui x: 15-49. t Gen. xixi: 9. 
 
MOHAMMEDISM WORSHIP AND ETHICS; 17 
 
 'mean in this grave problem. On one side, the Sadducees, as Joseph 
 attests, set no bounds to human liberty, a system as absurd as it 
 was impious. On the other, the Essenes spoke a language in which 
 contempt was almost inevitable. They ascribed (Joseph still our 
 witness) all to destiny. 
 
 Far from us the thought of seeing in the destiny of the Essenes 
 the fatalism of the Mussulman or the necessity of Spinoza. But with- 
 out being the cause, it has assuredly given occasion to the second, 
 and perhaps also to the first. We should, however, for the honor of 
 the human mind, much more than for that of Islamism, remark that 
 the Arab philosophy has struggled in every way against the evil con- 
 sequences of the fatalism consecrated by Mahomet, and that it has 
 been sometimes bold enough to maintain the opposite opinion, to 
 assert that the free judgment of man is intact. 
 
 fCHAPTEB II. 
 
 \VORSUII* .AJNTD ETHICS. 
 
 The examination we have made of the Mohammedan faith has met 
 our expectations. The result has but more and more demonstrated 
 that Pharisaical origin which we strongly suspected from the first. 
 A new stud}' now presents itself, viz : The religious practice and 
 worship of Islam. This, as we have said, includes four divisions : 
 prayer, fasting, alms and pilgrimage to Mecca. Let us commence with 
 prayer, but as this must be preceded by purifications, let us first say 
 a word as to these. They are of two kinds : 1st, total purification, 
 called, ghosl, that is, ablution of the whole body, corresponding to 
 the Hebrew tebila ; 2d, purification of the face, hands and feet, done 
 after a set fashion, the wodon. 
 
 Here is a distinction corresponding exactly to the most ordinary 
 practices of the Pharisees. Let .us see if the mode of performance 
 in Islamism be less simple. After sexual intercourse the whole body 
 is to be purified by immersion; likewise, those who have been near the 
 dead, and women who have been confined or have had their courses. 
 These four cases are anticipated by Moses; but what best proves the 
 Pharisaical derivation is the first ablution, which, though clearly 
 enjoined by the Mosaic text, acquired its general signification and im- 
 portance only from Ezra and the Kabbinical institutions. In short, 
 the face, hands and feet are purified before prayer. It is true that 
 
18 MOHAMMEDISM WORSHIP AND ETHICS. 
 
 this particular intention and special object did not enter into-tHe 
 binical prescriptions ; but the daily occurrence of the practice, and 
 the general ideas of not approaching holy things without this puri- 
 fication leave no room to doubt that the same spirit presided in both 
 cases regarding the object of these ablutions. 
 
 Still more, the Pharisees, when water cannot be had, fulfil this 
 obligation by using fine sand or dust, and to the same expedient, in 
 a similar lack, has the Koran recource. 
 
 Although the Koran does not order-circumcision, the custom is 
 too well known and too old among the Arabs to need mention. But 
 what we should notice is that the Arabs say circumcision is as old as 
 Adam, to whom it was taught by the angel Gabriel. Now, is not this, 
 in another guise, the assertion of the Kabbis, that not alone was Adam 
 created perfect ; but many other Patriarchs after him were born cir- 
 cumcised. 
 
 Is this the only bodily preparation which the Arabs'think indis- 
 pensable to worship and prayer ? The attitude of the body during 
 prayer is no less necessary to render it acceptable. To turn towards 
 the holy place is an indispensable duty, and all can see how the 
 thought of Mahomet, and the ancient usage of Israel (practised by 
 Daniel himself at Babylon) curiously coincide. How then, if we 
 knew, for instance, that, according to the oldest injunction of Ma- 
 homet, it was towards Jerusalem one should face during prayer? 
 But this fact is well established. Ever, even since Mecca has taken 
 the place of Jerusalem, do Mussulmen and Jews at the hour of 
 prayer, turn their eyes and bodies to their sacred cities. 
 
 Alms, the second precept of Islamism, is of two kinds, viz : legal 
 and voluntary. The first is determined by law, regard being had to 
 both the quantity and quality of the gifts ; the other is left to the 
 disposition of each, which is more similar to the Judaic institu- 
 tions ? In the latter also, we have tenths of all kinds, the corners 
 of the^fields, the small grapes or the forgotten corn-ears that belong 
 in full right to the poor, to strangers, widows and orphans ; and 
 there is also the alms proper which each gives according to his 
 means or generosity. The analogy appears already in this general 
 distinction, and it is no less visible as to the time most suitable for 
 the exercise of this duty. The Koran, as do the Babbis, recom- 
 mends the giving of alms-at prayer-time, that it may intercede with 
 God for us. We seem to hear and see Babbi Eliezer, who always 
 gave alms before prayer, recalling the verse from the Psalms : "I 
 shall see thy face through charity."* Mussulman humanity extends 
 to animals. Has it surpassed the sensibility and goodness of the 
 
 * Chap, xvii, 16 Talmud BabaBathm, foL 10. 
 
MOHAMMEDISM WORSHIP AND 
 
 Pharisees? Long before societies for the pi 
 were thought of, those Pharisees, so little known, 
 give an animal pain is a sin against the law of God ; and had Male- 
 branche been a Jew he would not have given his dog that famous 
 kick, saying : ' ' She has no feeling. " ' ' The sophistry " of these Phar- 
 isees could discover in the most revered passages of the Pentateuch, 
 the obligation to provide for the wants of animals before sitting to 
 table, and one of these heartless, stupid Pharisees could eat nothing 
 before ordering his oxen to be fed.* 
 
 The law of Mahomet prescribes nothing as to the quantity of 
 alms. A new homage, as all can see, to the Pharisaic origin. Ordi- 
 nary alms is generally confined to the fortieth part. This was the 
 maximum which the Rabbis appointed for the Terouma, or tax for 
 the sacrifiers. On extraordinary occasions, after gaining a battle or 
 lucky speculation, very liberal alms should be given. What limit 
 did Islamism prescribe ? The very same as did the Doctors assem- 
 bled at Ouscha to check the inconsiderate impulse of Hebrew char- 
 ityviz, a fifth.f 
 
 As to the third article of the faith, viz, fasting, Mahomet has 
 exaggerated its value far beyond that given it by the Rabbis ; per- 
 haps because it appeared to him more meritorious in a people still 
 subjected to the appetites of the flesh. Mahomet, however, seems 
 to have taken one idea from the Rabbis when he says : " The breath 
 of the faster is more pleasant to God than the odor of musk." Sub- 
 stituting the odor of sacrifices for that of musk, we have an imitation 
 of the Talmud,! and especially of the Cahalists. How do Mussul- 
 men keep the ordained fast, and what are the self-imposed priva- 
 tions? The Bible speaks but of the "affliction of the spirit," or 
 rather of the mortification of the senses. But the Pharisaical defi- 
 nition gives us exactly the manner in which the Arabs keep the fast. 
 To eat, drink, wash, annoint the body, br have sexual intercourse, 
 are all forbidden by Jewish tradition during the great fast. And 
 these acts the Koran likewise prohibits, from day-^break to sun-set. 
 If not abstained from, the fast is considered void. Day-break is the 
 commencement of the Mussulman fast ; but the Koran brings us 
 still more closely than by this point to prove Pharisaism when it 
 says that the fast commences as soon as a white thread can be dis- 
 tinguished from a black one in the light of dawn. This is what the 
 Mischna lays down as to the reading of the Schema in the morning, 
 viz, as soon as blue can be discerned from white. Mahomet designates 
 the tenth of the month Moharram as the most appropriate day for 
 fast. Does he but sanction a custom already in force among the 
 Arabs, as Al-Ghazali thinks ? We think it much more likely that 
 
 Talmud Berachoth, fol. 40. f Ib. Kethubotb, fol. 50. * Ib. Berachoth, fol. 17. 
 
20 MOHAMMEDISM WORSHIP AND ETHICS 
 
 lie has imitated the great Jewish fast on the 10th of the 7th month, 
 especially as he too calls his fast aschour after the Mosaic assor, 
 held on the day of Atonement. 
 
 As to the pilgrimage to Mecca, although Mahomet preserved a 
 custom already in vogue among the Arabs, he has but followed the 
 example of Moses, who enjoins on all Isrealites to visit the temple 
 of God three times a year. If Mahomet has not been so exacting, 
 and commands the performance of this duty once only in life, it is 
 because his religion, like Christianity, was destined to spread itself 
 wherever the sword or proselytizing opened a way, because it is 
 much more a cosmical than a national worship, and because three 
 annual visits to the temple at Mecca would have been almost impos- 
 sible for the inhabitants of most countries. In giving precepts to 
 the Arabs, Mahomet did not confine himself to purely positive 
 ones, such as those we have mentioned. He forbid many things, of 
 which we shall mention but two, where the imitation from the Jews 
 is incontestable, viz : the use of certain meats, and usury. If the 
 flesh of swine was rejected by the Arabs before Mahomet's day, as is 
 pretended, no doubt that Mahomet himself forbid many other meats. 
 Not only is pork forbidden by the Koran, but also blood, as well 
 as all animals that die naturally, or that have been strangled, or 
 slain by other animals; although all such are allowed under the 
 pressure of imperious necessity, from want of food, or in extreme 
 danger. Are not these purely Hebrew importations, both the pre- 
 cepts and restrictions ? 
 
 Let us now take a rapid glance at the civil institutions of Mo- 
 hammedism. Here it is that the Pharisaical influence shows itself 
 in all its strength. Let us begin with marriage. The Koran allows 
 polygamy. Is it as arbitrary and unconditional as some authors 
 think ? Far from it ; the Koran is precise thereupon : no one can 
 have more than four wives, the exact number appointed by the 
 Kabbis. The same causes that authorize, in Judaism,* a woman to 
 demand a divorce, are equally admissible in the Mahomedan law, 
 viz : bad treatment, neglect to maintain, impotence, or any other lack 
 of conjugal duty. In both religions, a widow or repudiated wife, 
 must wait three months before re-marrying; if she suckles a child, 
 she must wait two years reckoning from its birth. f 
 
 Adultery in both religions is punished by stoning. To prove 
 the crime four witnesses are required by Mahomet, two by Moses ; 
 and what deserves attention is the imprecation which the former 
 imposes on a woman accused three times by her husband of adul- 
 tery, obliging her, if she wishes to be acquitted to invoke the ven- 
 
 * Talmud Kethuboth, Ch. v Shoulchan Arouch, Vol. iii, Ch. xiiL 
 t Maimondos Hitchouth Ishouth, xix. 
 
MOHAIOCEDISM WORSHIP AND E THICS. 21 
 
 geance of God on her head, if she is guilty. Is not this the impre- 
 cation accompanying the test of the bitter waters found in the book 
 of Numbers? 
 
 The law of Moses does not allow human life to be estimated at a 
 price. Murder must be punished, but not by a fine. Mahomet has 
 greater flexibility. A compensation paid the family, the redemption 
 of a captive Mussulman, will acquit the homicide, provided always 
 the nearest relative of the slain is satisfied ; otherwise, the criminal is 
 given up to him to suffer any death such relative choses to inflict : 
 a new lapse from the law of Moses, in which Mahomet falls into an 
 excess of severity, as he just before erred by an excessive indulgence. 
 Never did the law of Moses place the life of a man at the disposi- 
 tion of another ; and if certain expressions seem to justify doubts 
 on this point, it is because the nearest relative played, in Jewish 
 society, the part of public accuser, and because putting the killer 
 into the hands of god haddam, means simply, surrendering him to 
 his fate, public justice never foregoing its judgment or the execu- 
 tion of the criminal. Some would have it that the banishment of 
 an unintentional homicide, ordered by Moses, was to save him from 
 the anger of the nearest relative of the slain, and some have talked 
 of the spirit of vengeance common to both Arabs and Jews, which 
 originated the severe punishment in vogue with both. The Mosaic 
 text in no wise justifies this interpretation, for the law as to involun- 
 tary homicide has all the marks of a public penalty, far more than 
 those of a provision to defeat the revenge of relatives; and especially 
 because an involuntary sin, such as the eating of blood or tallow, 
 equally requires an expiation, and that by a sacrifice. But all sup- 
 positions of this kind crumble before Pharisaical tradition, which, 
 far from extending this law, as the text might imply, to all involun- 
 tary killing, limits its action strictly to a homicide who kills through 
 culpable negligence, and declares all others free to come and go 
 without having to fear reprisals of any sort from the relatives. 
 
 The law of retaliation is sanctioned by the Koran as well as by 
 the law of Moses ; but what completely justifies the Pharisaical 
 interpretation of this law is the Mussulman practice and interpreta- 
 tion of it. The Pharisees, as we know, assert that Moses' " eye for 
 eye, tooth for tooth," etc., means only that their value shall be paid 
 byline. See how these " slaves of the letter " can foil an unjust and 
 barbarous usage, and see the services that Pharisaism has rendered 
 humanity ! Is it by a felicitous faithlessness to the Mosaic thought 
 that they evaded the consequences of the literal interpretation, or have 
 they taken liberties with the true spirit that dictated this law? 
 One might think so, taking only the words of Exodus. But besides 
 the significant phrase in Leviticus (Chap, xxiv: 18) , one the most 
 
22 MOHAMMEDISM WORSHIP AND ETHICS. 
 
 favorable for the Pharisaical exposition, the example of Islam is very 
 noteworthy. Retaliation is there sanctioned in the same terms and 
 with the same force as in the Pentateuch, and yet, strange to say ! 
 this law gets specifically the same interpretation as does the Mosaic 
 one at the hands of the Pharisees. No doubt whatever; and seldom 
 or never is the practical application diverse. 
 
 War upon infidels is one of the most sacred duties recommended 
 by Islamism. The greatness of the reward promised to him devot- 
 ing his time, fortune and life to this work, is equaled only by the 
 punishment in store for those who refuse it their properties 
 or persons, and for runaways and deserters. With Islam the 
 sword is the key of heaven and hell, and those wars being religious 
 could have no limits but those of the world swayed by the 
 Koran. What were the holy wars for Christianity but religious 
 wars ? Is there anything similar in Judaism ? Remarkable fact ! 
 Judaism, nation, state, government though it was, took good care not 
 to enlist the state, the nation, in the service of its dogmas; through 
 fear of raising a religious war, it condemned itself to wage no war, 
 that is, to be forever politically inferior; it forbid itself all aggran- 
 dizement, all conquests except what God had previously determined, 
 and those in very modest measure. What a difference between the 
 two doctrines ! The sword, for Islamism, is the key to heaven and 
 hell. But for the Pharisees, it is not merely no ornament, but an 
 impure object that defiles the touch like a dead body.* Is this the 
 spectacle with which the two religious offshoots of Judaism present 
 us? In these no state, no nationality, no country in short, no 
 excuse that might make a war more necessary, more lawful. They 
 could have claimed, at less expense than could Judaism, merit 
 for moderation, for love of peace. But nothing of the kind. In 
 both cases, the infidel was the true enemy, what the word barbarian 
 signified for paganism, what the political enemy was for Judaism, 
 the infidel was for the Christian Church and for Islam, that is, their 
 natural and proper enemy, the only enemy with whom they might 
 have truce, but never a definite peace as long as he continued in his 
 errors. No need for these sects to repeat the priests harangue 
 to the people before battle, f or the words of Maimonides inspiring 
 every Hebrew citizen J with courage for battle. There will ever be 
 between a Hebrew war and a Christian or Mohammedan one, the 
 difference we have named, one as great as between the religions 
 themselves that abyss in short which men have made between them. 
 The first one will never be more than a defensive war, or at most a 
 political one ; the other two are but and can be only wars of religion. 
 
 9 Talmud S&abttrtb, foL 93. t Iteut w; 2. I Malmon.- Hifcbtrath Melachim, Ch. vii 
 
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