THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 William Popper

 
 JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY, 
 
 THEIR AGREEMENTS AND DISAGREEMENTS. 
 
 A Series of Friday Evening Lectures, Delivered at the Plum Street Temple, 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, 
 
 REV. DR. ISAAC M. WISE. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 BLOCK & Co., PUBLISHERS. 
 
 1883.
 
 BM 
 535 
 
 
 JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 THEIR AGREEMENTS AND DISAGREEMENTS. 
 
 I. 
 AGREEMENTS. 
 
 SAMUEL SHARSA laid down the maxim : "B1 pND U'K W &WD 
 pDKD rSPP " The truth is, that he who reasons not does not believe ; 
 only he who reasons believes." This appears to be true, if we distinguish 
 correctly between superstition and that faith which roots in conviction. 
 Only that settled conviction can be called true belief which necessitates the 
 mind to acknowledge the identity of its ideas with the objects in reality, 
 as Moses Maimonides defines it. Therefore, the true religious belief, com- 
 monly called faith, must rest upon that conviction that our ideas of the ob- 
 jects of religion, like God, Providence, immortality, etc., are truthful repre- 
 sentations of those, objects in reality. This state of the mind can be reached 
 by the reasoning process only. 
 
 This is the standpoint, ladies and gentlemen, which prompts us to rea- 
 son on the religious beliefs which we or others may entertain. It was laid 
 down not only by Moses Maimonides, at the very door of his rabbinical 
 code, and by all his successors and expounders, but also before him 
 by Bachia ben Joseph Ibn Bakoda, the very pious and orthodox author 
 of the Chobath Hal-lebaboth; by Saadia the Gaon, in his Emunoth 
 Vadeoth; nay, by the Prophets and by Moses, who said, " Thou hast been 
 shown to know that Jehovah is God, there is none besides him ;" also 
 "And thou shall know this day, and reflect in thy heart that Jehovah is 
 God ; in heaven above and on earth below there is none besides him." 
 
 This impresses us with the solemn lesson : Fear not the progress of 
 science, dread not the discoveries of philosophy, be not terrified even by 
 
 91781?
 
 the necessity of advancing through error to truth, for truth is deathless, 
 as God said to Moses, " This is my name forever, and this is my memorial 
 from generation to generation ;" and truth only can be the mother of true 
 religion, while falsehood and fiction, however useful they may appear for 
 the time being, are invariably the progenitors of degrading superstition 
 and fanaticism. Be not alarmed if cherished beliefs examined under the 
 light of free thought appear untenable, for there is no salvation in self- 
 delusion, as there is none in the Fata Morgana for the traveler in the wilder- 
 ness. Truth redeems. Truth is the prince of peace. We seek truth. If 
 priests maintain salvation comes by faith, the uninquired and thoughtless 
 faith, the belief in dogmas, because they are absurd, they can not prove it, 
 as none has returned from the realms of eternity to furnish them with the 
 evidence. It is demonstrable, however, that truth redeems, it is demon- 
 strable by the peace and good-will, the prosperity and happiness which 
 it brings to man on earth. 
 
 It is from this standpoint and with these lessons before our eyes that we 
 open this evening a course of Friday evening lectures on "Judaism and 
 Christianity ; Their Agreements and Disagreements," with the intention 
 of discussing these points thoroughly, in as far as we are capable of doing 
 them justice, although to the best of our knowledge no Jewish lecturer 
 has as yet ventured to discuss these topics publicly and under the light 
 of free and independent thought. And why not? In the first place the 
 Jews were not permitted to criticise Christianity or even to defend and 
 expound publicly their own beliefs. Those who ventured to speak like 
 Rabbi Lipman, the author of the Sepher Nitzachon, were slain or mal- 
 treated. The books were burned or stored away in some monastery where 
 none could find them. Any passage found in any Jewish book in the least 
 offensive to the priestly taste was eradicated by the censor, or even by 
 the Jews themselves who feared the wrath of their neighbors. Nor were 
 the Christians permitted to speak. Heretics and schismatics were burned 
 by the thousands, and many more were crushed or suffocated in dismal 
 dungeons. Giardano Bruno was not the last victim of fanaticism. He 
 was brought to the stake and burned as an obstinate heretic in Rome, 
 February 17, 1600, and Giardano Bruno was an independent reasoner. 
 Nor did John Calvir. do much better in Geneva in persecuting Castellio 
 and Jerome Bolsec with hundreds and thousands of others whom he 
 called libertines because they would not subscribe to all his doctrines ; 
 and having Servetus burned, October 27, 1553, as an incorrigible heretic. 
 So free thought and free speech had been suppressed for fifteen long cen- 
 turies, and they are yet under the ban of ostracism and under the rod 
 of persecution in all countries except this and France. No wonder, then,
 
 5 
 
 that the Jew kept silent when the Christian was not permitted to speak. 
 Nor was it advisable for the Jew to speak .overly loud of his opinions 
 among Jews, if they were of the non-conforming kind. Those who burned 
 the books of Maimonides and raged furiously against the study of phi- 
 losophy, or those who drove Uriel Acosta to suicide and excommuni- 
 cated Baruch Spinoza, or those who denounced and cursed Moses Men- 
 delssohn and his disciples, as in our very days many of these so-called re- 
 formers were hated, persecuted and denounced by their bigoted co-relig- 
 ionitts, did certainly not encourage free thought and free speech. And 
 so the Jew was silent, although his silence was misconstrued to the effect 
 that Judaism had no apology for its doctrines and no arguments against 
 its opponents. 
 
 Thank Heaven we are in America, and in Cincinnati, where free thought 
 and free speech are the birthright of every law-abiding person. Speech and 
 arguments govern the community, and personal liberty is esteemed as 
 man's most precious boon. Thank Heaven that we live in an age and a 
 country in which bigotry and fanaticism are subjected to the scepter of 
 justice and reason, and have learned the art of moderation. Now and 
 here, it is possible to discuss fairly any important subject, and none is more 
 important than religion, which is after all the motive power of indi- 
 vidual volitions, and the character of the generality. Now and here it 
 is proper to compare and review Judaism and Christianity, their agree- 
 ments and disagreements, at the electric light of reason ; to criticise and 
 expose errors with the apparatus of logic ; to praise and recommend, 
 whatever may be found praiseworthy and recommendable, without preju- 
 dice or fanaticism ; to reconcile and unite, wherever conciliation is admis- 
 sible and unification possible ; to attack error and advance truth without 
 malice, scorn or any unnecessary offense ; to contribute a man's share to 
 the dominion of peace and good will by a mutual better understanding of 
 our intentions, aims and objects. 
 
 Whoever is afraid of the two-edged sword of truth and the cold steel of 
 logic, is not expected to listen to these lectures. We say the two-edged 
 sword, and mean what we say ; for we will have to cut into both Judaism 
 and Christianity, as there are old sores in e'ach system which must be cut, 
 now or later, and will be cut and healed by the world's steady progress, 
 whether we recognize them or not. Whatever can not stand the rigid ap- 
 plication of reason is doomed to perish. Whatever is in the way of the 
 unity and fraternity of the human family will be overthrown. Whatever 
 is unkind, uncharitable, ungenerous, intolerant, illiberal or unfree can not 
 last much longer in our country. There can be no harm in exposing any 
 elements of this kind at once and radically. Whoever can stand this
 
 process of purification is respectfully invited to aid and assist us in our 
 search for truth. The audience is respectfully requested to excuse this 
 lengthy preface. We go now to our subject. 
 
 It would be in its place here to give definitions of Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity, and I would gladly do so if anybody could define those generic 
 terms to the satisfaction of the majority of their votaries. That which is 
 in a continuous state of evolution can not be fixed or limited by any def- 
 inition. Judaism always was in a state of evolution, as must be evident to 
 any observer of large periods thereof. The Judaism from and after Moses 
 was not the same as the Judaism from and after Samuel and David ; 
 nor was the Judaism of the first Hebrew Commonwealth identical with 
 that of the second Commonwealth ; so before and after the close of the 
 Talmud; before and after the casuists had written; before and after 
 the Spanish school, and so on to our days, Judaism changed. 
 
 The same precisely is the case with Christianity. From and after 
 Jesus and the original Apostles; from and after Paul of Tarsus; 
 from and after John the Evangelist; from and after the Council of 
 Nice, the establishment of the Roman and Greek Churches ; from 
 and after the Councils and scholasts of the Middle Ages ; from and after 
 the Reformation and so on to our days, Christianity changed and 
 changes yet, so that every now and then a new sect springs into 
 existence. You can not define that which admits of no definition, to 
 cover the whole subject. At this very moment, take the past out of 
 the consideration, it is impossible to furnish an adequate definition 
 of either Judaism or Christianity. You send down to Longworth 
 Street, where a small congregation of Russian orthodox Jews meet, 
 and ask of that body, as of our friends over yonder in Lodge Street, 
 a definition of Judaism. They let you have it to the best of their 
 knowledge, and you read it to any of our temple congregations here, or 
 in St. Louis, Chicago or New York, or elsewhere, and you will be 
 frankly told that is not Judaism. Go across the street to the Roman 
 Catholic prelate, or there to the Unitarian pastor; ask our German 
 pastors, and then our Puritian preachers, to define Christianity for you ; 
 then compare notes, and you will find that none has given you an exact 
 definition of Christianity, because none could do it to the satisfaction' 
 of all. There must be something wrong in all those systems, something 
 not in harmony with reason and logic, or else the definitions must be 
 identical, as every scientist could tell what is geometry, what is 
 chemistry, what is physics, and so on with all the sciences. Therefore, 
 I will not now define what is Judaism or what is Christianity. I 
 must first investigate the elements essential to either, and tbon define.
 
 In some of those essential elements Judaism and Christianity agree, 
 are almost identical ; in others, however, they differ. We will review 
 first the '' agreements," as one of my excellent friends once advised me. 
 He said : " If you should ever feel compelled to quarrel with any 
 neighbor about some disputed point, begin with the attempt of ascer- 
 taining in what points you agree; that matter settled, then speak of 
 the disputed point, and in nine cases out of ten you will be astonished 
 to discover that you did not essentially disagree at all." Let us dis- 
 cuss the '* agreements " first. 
 
 Jew, Christian and Mohammedan agree in the belief in the exist- 
 ence of one God, who is the Author, Preserver and sole Sovereign of 
 the universe, with its uncountable millions of individual beings, the 
 Lord and Father of man and all other intelligent beings, if such exist 
 besides man, the Eternal, Invisible. Almighty and Omnipresent, of 
 whom Goethe has Faust, in his frivolity, sing 
 
 " Who dares express Him ? 
 And who confess Him, 
 Saying, i do believe? 
 A man's heart bearing, 
 What man has the daring 
 To say : I acknowledge him 
 The All-enfolder, 
 The All-upholder?" 
 
 Before Him, who is the mystery of mysteries, and yet the clearest of 
 all revelations reaching the human mind, the most distant and the 
 nearest, most cogitable and unknowable, before Him, Jew, Christian 
 and Mohammedan stand in awe, feel Hia presence, think of His great- 
 ness, praise, worship and glorify His holy name. 
 
 Thus much has been gained in the world's progress, that all civilized 
 nations believe in the living God of Israel. The atheist is neither 
 Jew, Christian nor Mohammedan. The difference between these three 
 faiths is not in the substance of this doctrine: it is in its accidents. 
 They differ in definitions. The trinitarian believes not in three Gods ; 
 his definition of the one God distinguishes his faith from that of other 
 monotheists, and makes him intolerant toward them. Not what God is 
 supposed to have revealed of himself, but what man has added, is the 
 element of disturbance. As in time of yore the Prophet exclaimed : 
 " Have we not all one Father; hath not one God created us?" we may 
 repeat now, and admonish all the children of the civilized nations in 
 the words of another prophet : " Peace, peace to him who is nigh and to 
 him who is far off, saith Jehovah, and 1 will heal him."
 
 Again, Jew, Christian and Mohammedan believe alike that this 
 physical world is of God's creation. He preceded it; He designed and 
 executed; He made and shaped it. 
 
 " He said and it was; 
 
 He commanded and there it stood." 
 
 The spirit is the substance of all being, and preceded it; the spirit 
 only is from eternity to eternity ; the spirit is absolute, and all ma- 
 terial things are not, because their existence is relative, subject to 
 perpetual change; they are and are not; they become and perish. 
 Thus all of them agree upon the substantiality and omnipotence of 
 the spirit, the accidentality and inferiority of matter, which is the 
 creature and the servant of the Most High. Therefore, they also 
 agree that God's power and wisdom pervade and govern all things 
 in this immense universe. God's providence extends over all his 
 creatures, the hosts on high, the sun and stars, and the hosts below, 
 man and beast, elephant or worm, cedar or fungus, all, all of them are 
 objects of his care, provided for and controlled by his wisdom and 
 power. The spirit reigns and matter obeys. The Mohammedan may 
 incline more to fatalism than some of us do; not, indeed, by Moham- 
 med's teachings, but in consequence of his expounders; still all 
 maintain and all profess "Jehovah reigneth forever and aye," as 
 did redeemed Israel at the Red Sea. 
 
 Furthermore, Jew, Christian and Mohammedan believe alike in the 
 spirit of man being substance of the divine substance, with quali- 
 ties of the eternal spirit, and, therefore, immortal like the death- 
 less source from which it flows and in which it exists in time and 
 eternity, consciously or unconsciously, in the purity of holiness or 
 the brutality of sensual and carnal depravity, at the height of self- 
 consciousness and the blissful memory of goodness, or the twilight 
 idiocy and the painful recollections of self-inflicted evil. So the water 
 remains the same crystal fluid as it is in the spring in the rock, although 
 it may, mixed with the mire, become Ohio or Mississippi water, it is 
 water still. The element (the substance) changes not. All of them be- 
 lieve in the essence and immortality of the soul, in this or that form, and 
 in some kind of reward and punishment, however uncharitably they 
 may exclude one another from the kingdom of heaven, and expel the 
 children from the Father's house, in consequence of human deduc- 
 tions and unreasoning fanaticism ; yet all believe the same funda- 
 mental doctrine as a characteristic of human nature. 
 
 Again, Jew, Christian and Mohammedan do verily believe that 
 God revealed himself or his will to Abraham and Moses, to and
 
 . A 
 
 through the prophets and bards of Israel; all believe in the revela* 
 tion on Mount Sinai, in this or that form, so explained or other- 
 wise, and all believe more or less in miracles, in 'the natural or su- 
 pernatural form, and all point to them as a species of evidence upon 
 which their respective faith rests. Therefore the question arises, If 
 they thus agree, why do they thus disagree? If their beliefs are so 
 much alike in the main, why do they denounce, hate, persecute and 
 even abhor one another, as history tells they did and partly do 
 now? Why should they not look first and foremost upon those main 
 points, in which they agree, and admonish one another to peace 
 and good will, and address to each other the prophetical words, u Go 
 ye, and let us ascend the mountain of Jehovah"? It is all on account 
 of the Unfortunate " Disagreements," which we propose to discuss in 
 subsequent lectures. They are the cause of the misery, the numerous 
 woes, the tears and blood, the ugly stains in the history of civiliza- 
 tion. ' As to the points of agreement and the religion based upon 
 them, King David has provided us (Psalms xv.) with a splendid cate- 
 chism, which, we think, suffices to all good men: 
 
 "O Jehovah, who shall dwell in thy tent, who shall abide in thy 
 holy mountain? 
 
 '' He that walketh uprightly, worketh righteousness and speaketh 
 the truth in his heart; that uttereth no calumny with his tongue, doeth 
 no evil to his neighbor, and bringeth no reproach on his fellow-man, 
 in whose eyes the despicable is despised; he who honoreth those who 
 fear Jehovah, and having sworn even to his injury, changeth not; 
 that giveth not his money for usury, and taketh no bribe against the 
 innocent. 
 
 " He that doeth these things shall not be moved to eternity." 
 
 Thank you, King David, for this universal catechism. Whereas, 
 neither rabbi, nor priest, nor dervish can improve it, we stop here and 
 keep our u Disagreements" for another lecture.
 
 II. 
 
 INSPIRATION, PROPHECY AND REVELATION. 
 
 THE Bible is a great book, although many critics say it is not. The 
 world does not agree with them. The world changes and we change 
 with it, still the world did not change in this one point, as it yet maintains 
 that the Bible is a great book. Vox populi, vox Dei is in Hebrew *Koj, HAM- 
 MON KE-KOL SHADDAi, and Cicero's argument, based on the common con- 
 sent of all nations (Argumentum a consensu gentium), must not be taken 
 too lightly, especially not by a jurist, for all men know more than any 
 one man ; and when we speak of human reason we mean the reason of hu- 
 manity, or, at least, of that portion thereof that is capable of reasoning. 
 Why does the world ascribe so much importance to that collection of 
 books called the Bible? Because one portion thereof is a direct revelation 
 from on high, it is maintained, a momentary crevice in heaven's impene- 
 trable dome, through which mortals beheld the glory of the Majesty on 
 high ; and another portion was written down by men, divinely inspired, for 
 truth, righteousness, the salvation and happiness of man. How do you 
 know that this is so? reason asks the believing multitude. By the internal 
 evidence which the book offers is one answer ; by the uninterrupted tradi- 
 tions and the common consent of the civilized world is the other. The 
 book offers the most sublime lessons, most impressively formulated, on 
 the nature and will of God, the duty, dignity and hope of man, and the 
 efficient and final causes of the universe and the cosmos therein, while 
 similar books of other nations of antiquity contain but grains of the uni- 
 versal truth under a vast heap of chaff rejected by human reason. They 
 represent small creeks, and the Bible is the broad stream of those lessons of 
 salvation which organize, civilize, humanize and sanctify the human family. 
 This is its internal evidence. The Hebrews, as far as their history reaches, 
 together with the Christian and Mohammedan Scriptures and nations from 
 their respective beginnings to this date testify to the holiness and divinity 
 of the Bible, and have established and conduct society on the principles and 
 laws contained in that book, because being of divine origin, they are con- 
 sidered supreme and universal, and base the duties and hopes of the indi- 
 
 pon
 
 11 
 
 vidual man on those very lessons. This is the historical evidence. Ex- 
 cepting the few voices of skeptics and unbelievers which reach us from the 
 past, up to the very door of the nineteenth century, the premises are cor- 
 rect, the argument is acceptable and the evidence conclusive in as far as 
 circumstantial evidence suffices to establish a fact. 
 
 Here, however, reason interposes a very important objection, which 
 is this : The supremacy and dignity of your holy books rest upon the alle- 
 gations of inspiration, prophecy and revelation. These appear to be not 
 only supersensual but even supernatural manifestations, which no man' 
 whose knowledge is only sensual and natural in its foundations can estab- 
 lish. We divide the question and give the following two answers : 
 
 The knowledge which we derive by our corporeal senses is the smallest 
 fraction of man's actual knowledge. There is in man a sentient, thinking 
 and productive principle which penetrates far beyond the sphere of the 
 senses. Not only all our purely religious, ethical and metaphysical specu- 
 lations and conceptions, but also the science!, or rather that principal 
 portion thereof which constructs science of the detached facts of our 
 sensual experience and experiments are absolutely supersensual. As 
 absurd as it is for any man of sound sense to maintain that he can believe 
 nothing which he could not see, i. e., not perceive with his senses and grasp 
 with his animal intellect, equally unphilosophical is the allegation that su- 
 persensual manifestations can not be proved by the logical process. No 
 sensible man doubts that the sun is a fixed star around which the earth, 
 with the other planets and moons of the system, revolve, whatever the 
 Book of Joshua may assert to the contrary, and yet Copernicus, Keppler, 
 Galileo and Newton did not construct the evidence in support of that su- 
 persensual fact from sensual perceptions and Observations. And yet nine- 
 tenths of all men know and believe this fact by tradition only, by the argu- 
 mentum a consensu gentium the common consent of the nations precisely 
 in the same manner as they know that the Bible is a divine book. Sen- 
 sualism as a philosophical basis is but one side, and the lower one only, of 
 the foundation of truth. 
 
 Revelation, however one might explain it, signifying a supernatural com- 
 munication to man coming from God directly or indirectly by his angels 
 or otherwise, how could man, reasoning logically, arrive at the evidence in 
 support of such a manifestation? We say that materialism, lealism and 
 positivism ; also Spinozism, are obliged to take the supernatural for granted, 
 although they can neither prove nor disprove it ; for they can not close 
 their eyes to the conscience and consciousness of man, reason, freedom, 
 ideality, moral feeling and a3sthetical taste, all of which are inexplicable by 
 all the laws, hypotheses and theories of and concerning matter and force;
 
 12 
 
 hence they are supernatural facts with all cf them, and facts they are, not- 
 withstanding those gentlemen's inability to explain or prove them. They 
 must admit that revelation is only one more supernatural fact in addition 
 to many others which they can not explain, prove or disprove. 
 
 The theist, however, all those who start from the premises concerning 
 God, man and their mutual relation, which we have laid down in the first 
 lecture of this series, can not deny the possibility, and is necessitated by 
 reasoning from analogy to admit the spiritual raport between God and 
 man. Here you etand in this physical world. Each considers himself a 
 person, a being complete and independent, of distinct and individual exist- 
 ence. And yet your relation' to this physical nature with all its elements 
 and forces is constant and continuous. With a thousand invisible threads 
 you are tied to this physical world at large, and each is a channel to con- 
 duct into you the gifts of nature which you continually reciprocate. You 
 affect and are affected without rest or pause, you are in this material nature 
 a mere part thereof and in constant raport with it. although you appear to 
 be a complete and independent individual. "Well, then, you who believe in 
 the existence of the one and eternal God, who is omnipotent and om- 
 nipresent; you who believe in the spirit of man and its Godlike qualities, 
 by what process of reasoning could you doubt the continuous spiritual 
 raport of the individual spirit with the universal spirit, if you must admit 
 the perpetual raport of individualized and cosmic matter, when the one 
 process is evidently as supernatural as the other? You see, appealing to 
 reason, there is no cause why the supernatural manifestations of inspira- 
 tion, prophecy and revelation should not be accepted as facts. Therefore, 
 the vast majority of men could and did accept them, and the most eminent 
 philosophers of all past centifries, Plato, Aristotle included, could expound 
 and advocate them. " I am no better than my ancestor?." 
 
 We have now arrived at the main object of this lecture, viz : the consid- 
 eration of these three terms : Inspiration, prophecy and revelation, and 
 herewith we have also arrived at the first point of disagreement in Judaism 
 and Christianity. 
 
 Inspiration signifies to bring in spirit, viz : into any person by an out- 
 ward agency, and thus increase quantitatively the spirit of that person, giv- 
 ing him more spirit. In this form, however, it is a New Testament idea, 
 where the Holy Ghost is supposed to have come down in a materialized 
 form, as a dove, upon Jesus after his baptism, or in the shape of fiery 
 tongues, upon the apostle on the Day of Pentecost. The ancient Hebrews 
 did not connect the spirit with the idea of quantity. Therefore, they had no 
 word for inspiration, as they had no idea of conducting spirit into a man, 
 as heat, magnetism or electricity might be conducted into him. Nor is the
 
 13 
 
 expression Holy Ghost (Hebrew Ruach hac-Kodesh) found anywhere in the 
 Old Testament ; it is New Hebraic, and was coined by the Rabbis, perhaps 
 in imitation of the terms used by the early Christians. The Biblical idea as 
 worded by the later prophets especially, " And there was upon me the 
 hand (or power) of God;'' 'WThere was upon me the spirit of God;" 
 " Then the spirit lifted me up," and similar phrases express the idea that 
 the spirit of the favored man or woman was by a divine influence ele- 
 vated, heightened, its latent energies developed into actuality, by the media- 
 tion of a burning bush in the case of Mose?, by a vision of the throne of 
 glory in the cases of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and other occurrences in tho cases 
 of other prophetical or inspired men. Here is the idea of quality rather 
 than of quantity, the spirit of man possesses the latent qualities or capaci- 
 ties to be roused to a state of inspiration by a combination of outward cir- 
 cumstances, which God may have produced directly or indirectly. If that 
 state of inspiration was durable for any length of time in any person, or 
 even on any place which exercised such an inspiring influence, it was de- 
 scribed, also by post-biblical authorities as the SHEKINAH dwelling, resting 
 or abiding upon that person or place. Also this term and phrase were 
 coined by the Rabbis, and de not occur in the Old Testament, and still 
 later God himself was called the Shekinah, as he was called Shamayim, 
 "Heaven," Ham-mokom, " the place," or also Rachmana, "Love or the 
 Merciful." 
 
 . You see, the Christian idea of inspiration is altogether supernatural, 
 while the Jewish idea is natural and rational. The marvelous element in it 
 is limited to the inborn capacities of the favored person and the combination 
 of outward circumstances as the agency to unfold the potential to actual 
 energies. This is, perhaps, the cause of the entirely different views held by 
 Jews and Christians concerning the divinity of the Bible, which we will 
 discuss some other time. Here we will only remark that all ancient phi- 
 losophers, Plato and Aristotle, the Arabian, Jewish and Christian metaphy- 
 sicians of the Middle Ages accepted inspiration as a fact, natural or super- 
 natural, which they attempted to analyze and explain psychologically. 
 Among Jews it was, especially Saadia, Abraham Ibn Daud, Moses Maim- 
 onides, with his numerous expounders and followers, who adhered to the 
 natural aspect of inspiration, and they succeeded in impressing it upon Ju- 
 daism. Those worthies had accepted the idea of Rabbi Joshua ben Chanan- 
 iah, who in his controversy with Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcan in the Academy 
 of Jamnia (end of the first Christian century) declared, and the whole Col- 
 lege agreed with him, that miracles prove nothing, and " We pay no atten- 
 tion to the Bath-kol ; '' and this Bath-kol was in form and essence identical 
 with the Christian idea of inspiration, both being supernatural and con-
 
 14 
 
 crete in their manifestations. Rabbi Eliezer, who adhered to supernatural- 
 ism, was excommunicated by the College, although he was the brother-in- 
 law of Rabban Gamaliel, then Prince and Patriarch in Israel. The prin- 
 ciple thus illustrated was accepted by Rabbi Akiba, who with three of 
 his cotemporaries went into Gnostic speculations and practices to obtain 
 knowledge by inspiration, and at last came to the conclusion, " Thy 
 doings (thine own) bring thee nearer (to the Deity), and thy doings remove 
 thee (from Him);" which is to say that thy wisdom, righteousness and 
 holiness achieve for thee that victory over man's ignorance and wickedness 
 which thou seekest in that state of inspiration. 
 
 The subjective evidence of divine inspiration is the irresistible longing to 
 do some great deed or to utter some important truth in the name of God 
 and for the benefit and blessing of man, especially when mankind stands 
 in need of such deeds or such utterances ; then those needs are the outer 
 circumstances which attract and captivate the favored man's attention, en- 
 gage and actuate his mind, and finally become to him the cause of inspira- 
 tion, if by nature he is gifted with superior fancy, his intelligence and 
 ethical character are correspondingly developed and perfected, and his 
 mind is directed to the sublime and divine, the true and the good. The 
 impulse to perform valorous deeds for the salvation of man in their mun- 
 dane affairs, as recorded of Samson, or of Gideon, Jephthah and David 
 mark the lowest degree of inspiration, an inspiration manifested in valorous 
 deeds. A second and higher degree of inspiration manifests itself by the 
 sacred poet's inner desire to sing the praise of the Almighty, to advance 
 and adore truth and righteousness, to pour forth in the form of the beau- 
 tiful and sublime the lyric strains of the soul, and sing of eternal tfuth 
 and adoration, devotion, resignation, hope and thanksgiving, as in the 
 song of Moses, at the Red Sea, the song of Deborah, the Psalms of David, 
 Asaph, Jeduthun, the Sons of Korah, the Proverbs of Solomon, the Phi- 
 lo?ophism of Job and other productions of the kind. 
 
 The next higher degree of inspiration, according to Jewish conception, is 
 the lowest degree of prophecy, which, like the productions of prophecy, is 
 again divided in various degrees, one above the other, up to Moses, who was 
 THE prophet emphatically, as Maimonides maintains, while all other 
 prophets are only called so on account of the homonymy of the term. This 
 opinion of Maimonides is based upon various ancient maxims recorded in 
 the Talmud, especially the following: " All the prophets received their in- 
 spiration from Mount Sinai." " None of the prophets and prophetesses 
 added to the laws of Moses or abrogated any one thereof." " Moses saw 
 (Deity and truth) by the clearest reflector; the prophets saw by a dim re- 
 flector," You may add thereto the statements of Scriptures (Numb, xii,
 
 - 15- 
 
 5-8; Deuteronomy xxxiii. 10-12; Isaiah Iv. 10-12) upon which Jesus based 
 his allegation, that he had not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Law, not a 
 title or iota of which should fall to the ground ; simply because Moses 
 was THE prophet in the estimation of all his prophetical successors. 
 
 Here we have arrived at another point of disagreement in Judaism and 
 Christianity, viz : in the definition of the ideas : What constitutes a prophet? 
 what must a man do to deserve the acknowledgment of man as a divinely 
 inspired messenger? what is the nature, the psychology of prophecy? 
 Christianity starting with inspiration from the supernatural standpoint 
 must consistently maintain that the prophet is the divinely commissioned 
 man to a certain religious end, who predicts future events and works mira- 
 cles. Therefore, both Jesus and his original apostles, also Paul, according to 
 statements of the Acts of the Apostles, and a number of primitive Christians 
 prophesied and wrought miracles. A similar idea is also expressed in the 
 Talmud Yerushalmi, where the old maxim, " The wise man is superior to 
 the prophet," is illustrated by a king sending to his subjects two commis- 
 sioners, one his servant and the other his intimate friend. The docu- 
 ment given to the former tells the king's subjects that his commissioner 
 will prove them his identity by the royal insignia which he carries (predic- 
 tion and miracles in the case of the prophet). The document given to the 
 intimate friend (the savan) recommends him to the king's subjects on the 
 man's own merits, which can be demonstrated to all men. Still it can not 
 be denied that almost all the prophets whose literary productions we possess 
 wrought no miracles, and most of their predictions, if not all of them, point 
 to events so near their respective days, or at least they might be so understood, 
 that prophesying appears to have been no criterion for the genuine prophet. 
 Therefore, we think it has been set down by Moses Maimonides in the Rab- 
 binical Code ( Yesodei hat- Tkorah, chapters viii. and x., twice translated 
 into English), hence not as his private opinion, but as the traditional doc- 
 trine of the Hebrews ; that neither miracles nor predictions prove the 
 prophet ; that we do not believe in Moses because he did perform miracles ; 
 and that these were not the criteria of any prophet after him. It will be 
 necessary to discusa and understand this " disagreement" and its funda- 
 mental principles. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry, and beg 
 your pardon, that 1 could not fully keep my promise this evening to dis- 
 cusb inspiration, prophecy and revelation, as I do not believe I am entitled 
 any longer to the privilege of addressing you, and can only invite .you to 
 call again next Friday evening, if you wish to hear the rest of this dis- 
 course, which we now conclude with the words of Elihu in the Book of Job, 
 " Verily it is the spirit in the human being and the breath of the Almighty 
 which giveth them intelligence."
 
 III. 
 
 PROPHECY, REVELATION AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 The prophet, the man of God, of whom we read in Scriptures, was 
 neither the soothsayer, such as figures in the Egyptian processions and the 
 Grecian oracles; nor the legerdem'ainist of Arabia and India, who mum- 
 bled magic spells and performed marvelous tricks; he bad nothing in 
 common with the exorcist and thaumaturgist of other days, and had no 
 dealings with Satan and- his host of evil spirits; nor was he of the same 
 kind with the mystics and ascetics who dwelt in sylvan retreats, in dark 
 caves or obscure grottoes fasting, praying and divining; he was entirely 
 unlike the saints, monks and dervishes of later days ; he was a man and a 
 patriot, the Inh-Elohim, " the man of God," concerning whom it was be- 
 lieved, u Whatever he speaketh will surely come to pass " (I. Samuel ix. 6), 
 to whom people went '' To inquire of God " (Ibid.), for in olden days the 
 time of extreme simplicity, the Nabi " prophet " was also called ha-Roeh, 
 " the seer," and was supposed to unravel mysteries also for private indi- 
 viduals. (Ibid.) This, however, was only exceptionally the case. The 
 character and office of the prophet in Israel wag that of the sublime and 
 patriotic statesman with the broad, vast and generous conceptions, who in 
 the name of God and his law, spoke to the people or its leaders and 
 teachers words of righteousness, admonitions of piety, lessons of wisdom, 
 accompanied by menaces of dire punishment to the disobedient and re- 
 bellious, and promises of the divine favor to the righteous and veracious, 
 the patriotic and just, the humane and generous benefactors of man. 
 These are the main contents of all predictions recorded in the Book, as 
 made by the prophets, and on this principle only did they prophesy future 
 events, as means, not as ends, of their mission. The legends of miracles 
 are very few and far apart, after Moses and Joshua, Elijah" and Elisha, 
 Daniel and his very pious friends, so that the most remarkable prophets, 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve Minor Prophets, with only one 
 exception, wrought no miracles at all, and the one or two supposed mira- 
 cles wrought by Isaiah (II. Kings xx. 7, 11) must have been strictly pri- 
 vate. Moses had already cautioned his people not to attach any impor-
 
 17 
 
 tance to predictions or miracles, where they are intended to contradict 
 first principles, the dicta of reason (Deuter. xiii. 2-6; xviii. 20-22); there- 
 fore, Jewish theologians attached less importance to predictions and mira- 
 cles than to the dicta of reason and the plain teachings of the Bible. 
 
 The Hebrew term Nabi, " prophet " is derived from Naba (see Fuerst), 
 " to spout, to pour forth," and signifies a man who pours forth fluent 
 speech, an eloquent orator. The term is used in Scriptures for both the 
 true and the false prophet, the prophet of Jehovah or of Baal and Astarte. 
 The oldest Aramaic version extant, ascribed to Jonathan ben Uziel in the 
 century B. C., renders (I. Samuel x. 5) the term Chebel Nebiim (a band of 
 prophets) by Siath Saphria, "A band of Scribes" or perhaps "orators," 
 which affords an insight into the opinion of the ancient Hebrews concern- 
 ing the prophet. He was the popular orator, the mouthpiece of truth and 
 righteousness, the personified free press and free sp3ech in Israel, under 
 the special protection of God and the Law. The form changed, the funda- 
 mental idea remains, and is fundamental yet in the progress of civilization 
 and the enlightenment of nations. 
 
 In the Mosaic dispensation the head of the republic was to be a prophet, 
 or rather the principle one of his age (compare Exodus xxiii. 20-23 with 
 Deuter. xviii. 15-22), and he was the only human being in the theocracy 
 concerning whom the Law commands, " Ye shall hearken to him,' 1 which 
 distinction was bestowed on neither priest nor prince. Therefore, all heads 
 of the Hebrew Republic down to King Saul were called prophets by pos- 
 terity, as the heroic Daborah, baing at the head of the theocracy is given 
 the title in Scriptures, " And Deborah was*a prophetical woman ;" and the 
 books narrating their exploits were placed in that division of the Bible 
 which is called the Former Prophets. After the revolution under Samuel, 
 when Israel rejected the Mosaic theocracy, and established the kingdom, 
 the king, of course, was at the head of the new theocracy, and he also, as 
 in the case of Saul, David and Solomon, was supposed to be a prophet. 
 Still the actual prophet remained the most important and most influential 
 man in the State, before whom kings and high-priests bowed "down with 
 reverence, not merely because they were the men of God, but because they 
 were the men of the people, the advocates of Law, and the protectors of the 
 nation's rights and liberties, the guardians of truth and righteousness, with 
 which, and for which, they were inspired. One thousand years of history 
 elapsed between Moses and Malachi, and during all that time the prophet- 
 ical voice resounded with might. With the courage of the lion they re- 
 buked kings and warriors, priests and princes, the nation and her wicked 
 men ; and yet only two prophets, two in one thousand years, were slain in
 
 18 
 
 Judea, and in Israel, but once the wicked and idolatrous Ahab and Jezebel 
 persecuted and slew them. So it appears that also the most wicked in Is- 
 rael stood in veneration and awe before the messengers of the Most High, 
 announcing to them the oracles of the Living God. The prophet was a 
 unique]institution found among the ancient Hebrews only. 
 
 \Vho]and_what were those mental colossuses, that their persons and their 
 oracles were so sacred to their cotemporuries and to posterity? Moses 
 Maimonides answered this question most naturally. In harmony with the 
 philosophy of his age, as far as he could indorse it, and basing upon pas- 
 sages of the Bible and rabbinical writings, he gives us the psychology of the 
 prophet. He maintains that, like every other genius, the prophet is born, 
 as it is supposed that God said to Jeremiah (i. 5), for a genius he is in the 
 noblest 'sense of the term. His capacities are inborn, his abilities are ac- 
 quired by training, his oracles are the free gift of God, in correspondence 
 with his natural capacities and acquired abilities, which enable the individ- 
 ual spirit to stand in closer communion with the universal spirit than other 
 mortals can, and thus conceive verities and foresee events unknown to the 
 ordinary. mind. His natural capacities are, besides courage and predictive 
 power, a sound, normal and harmonious organism. In the first place the 
 imaginative power which quickly turns abstract ideas into living, moving 
 and plastic entities, standing in bold relief, as it were, before the mind's 
 eye, acting and speaking in the form of reality, so that the subjective be- 
 comes objective, and the person sees and hears without that which actually 
 occurs within himself. This organon to perceive conceptions is the com- 
 mon criterion of genius, and depends for its material on two points, the ac- 
 quired abilities and the outer circumstances. With the prophet, Maimon- 
 ides maintains that the acquired abilities must be of the highest intellectual 
 and moral grades. His reasoning capacities must be developed by study 
 and training, by science and reflection to a clear and energetic reasoning 
 power, so that the association of ideas, the classification of the homo- 
 geneous, and the process of judgment be rapid and correct, so much so that 
 he himself can not observe the rapid progress from the premises or antece- 
 dents^to the conclusions. His moral capacities must be ennobled and in- 
 vigorated by steady exercise in the good and the true, so that his animal 
 instincts and passions be perfectly subservient to reason, and he can only 
 wish and love, think and feel the good and the true, and all that is wicked, 
 false, low or mean become to him unnatural and repulsive. If thus fancy, 
 reason and morals are harmoniously developed in a man who has over- 
 come his worldly ambitions, the vulgar strivings, longings and yearn- 
 ings of the common man, and his soul is stimulated by the one great de- 
 sire for truth and righteousness, the sublime knowledge of God and His
 
 19 
 
 government, the elevation and happiness of man ; he is preparing to become 
 a prophet, and maj become one, if the outer circumstances do not'disturb 
 him in his work of spiritual elevation, and the concurrence of events do 
 not turn his mind in other directions. So the genius becomes a prophet 
 after he has risen gradually from the sphere of pure imagination to the 
 temple of moral grandeur, to the sunny height of sublime reason, to the 
 loftiest problems of the human mind, the mysteries of existence and that 
 mystery of mysteries which is to lead man to perfection and happiness. 
 So the prophet is educated. This is the analysis of his soul according to 
 Moses Maimonides, whose thoughts are well grounded upon Sacred Scrip- 
 tures and the traditions of Israel. Whether in that exalted state of mind 
 man will receive any message from on high, or in our modern\phrase- 
 ology will conceive original ideas on the truths which he seeks and the sal- 
 vation he desires to bring to man, depends on the will of God and the 
 combination of outer circumstances. 
 
 Did such men ever exist? If they did, they will remain forever the 
 glory of the human family. Poor creatures as we are, ingulfed in this 
 material world, ever troubled and vexed by a thousand small necessities, 
 weighed down by prodigal instincts and creeping along like snails upon 
 the mire of accumulated passions, we can hardly think that such men ever 
 existed, such giant natures, such seraphic minds. Among us one has the 
 fancy, another the reason, and alas ! another again the moral greatness ; one 
 has the partial means and another the untoward desire to rise and ascend 
 the mountain of God ; and all, all of us appear to have become fractional 
 men with some excellencies and many deficiencies. 
 
 We can, perhaps, no longer imagine or even think the perfect man in the 
 fulness of his manhood and his nearness to the Eternal Deity. And yet, 
 according to the beliefs and traditions of Israel there were such men, and 
 those men were the prophets ; and those prophets have bequeathed us the 
 grand legacy of the prophetical books contained in the Bible. Therefore, 
 those books are so much greater and holier than other books as their au- 
 thors were superior to all others known to fame. Their nearness to the 
 Eternal Deity is the objective evidence of the truth of prophecy. There 
 exists no better species of evidence in the world. The sons of the house 
 must know the father's will. Now look upon the ancient Hebrew prophet, 
 contemplate him from the standpoint of reason, scrutinize him with the 
 skeptic's critical eye, then compare him with all persons known to you per- 
 sonally or by tradition ; and I think you will agree with me that the prophet 
 was a man as unique and distinguished as are the prophetical Scriptures 
 among all other literary productions. And yet he was only man and no 
 more a man with faults and deficiencies, mortal like others ; and there
 
 20 
 
 was evidently nothing so supernatural about him, that it is not in perfect 
 harmony with human reason. The only difficulty we might experience in 
 identifying the true prophet with the natural man is in our false concep- 
 tions of man, his ability and perfectibility. 
 
 And yet neither the inspired bard nor the wisest of all teachers; neither 
 the holy seer nor the greatest of all prophets is looked upon from the Jew- 
 ish standpoint as the organ of revelation. " All the prophets received their 
 inspiration from Mount Sinai," which is to say that the prophets merely 
 expounded and promulgated the Sinaic revelation ; or there was only one 
 revelation, which was that from Mount Sinai. All of them spake like Moses, 
 and Moses spake like the expounder of the Sinaic revelation. It is all one 
 spirit one and the same contents. One God, one truth, one and the same 
 lesson of righteousness, which, spouting from Sinai, saturate all biblical 
 books from one end to the other. There is nothing new under the sun, not 
 even in the Bible. Its gold coins are from the mines of Horeb, moulded 
 and cast in different forms, but always the same rnetal. If the Sinaic reve- 
 lation is true, the whole must be true, and requires no other evidence. 
 
 If in anywise the One and Eternal God communicated with the people 
 of Israel through the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, then we know by 
 the most convincing evidence that Jehovah is God; in heaven above and 
 on earth below there is none besides him. We know that this very Je- 
 hovah is '' thy Elohim," the Creator and Preserver of the world ; the Leg- 
 gislator, Judge and King ; the Providence of the human family, and every 
 individual thereof; the Almighty King " who brought thee out of the land 
 of Egypt;" and that he delights in justice, freedom and righteousness, 
 for he redeemed you from the house of bondage, to legislate for you and 
 point out for you the path of righteousness to national prosperity and hu 
 man happiness. The introductory verse to the Sinaic revelation suffices 
 not only to silence all skepticism and to provide man with the light of 
 Heaven, but it is also all-sufficient as the principle upon which all moral 
 laws are based, all civilizing, humanizing and sanctifying institutions of 
 man can be founded, and, in fact, are founded more or less, and all hopes 
 of man can be safely rested ; for all ethical conceptions and all immor- 
 tality speculations derive their existence from that one verse of Scripture. 
 If that is true, then the whole economy of the Bible, the entire code of 
 morals, the whole fabric of government, the institution of worship, to- 
 gether with all the duties and hopes of man, as suggested therein, must 
 be true, for they are all derived from this axiom, from which they rise and 
 in which they find their evidence. Therefore some rabbis of the Talmud 
 maintained the first two sentences of the Decalogue all Israel heard di- 
 rectly from the Almighty, because they contain all that is necessary for
 
 21 
 
 man to know and understand in order to erect upon it the entire v structure 
 of morals, religion, government and prosperity on earth, happiness and 
 glory in eternity. The one God, the free man who communicates with the 
 Eternal, the one intelligence and love universal and individualized, the law 
 of righteousness as the fruit thereof, suffice as the postulate to what all 
 men need to know to fulfill their destiny and realize their hopes in time 
 and eternity. 
 
 Then the Sinaic revelation promulgates the categories of doctrines and 
 laws, precepts finished and embodied in laws, categories covering the en- 
 tire moral and religious sphere of man, flowing like a stream from that 
 eternal source announced in the first sentence, the perfect system in a few 
 words, to which nothing could be added and nothing taken away, as the 
 law of the covenant between God and Israel, the covenant between God and 
 man, all of which is true and unalterable, if the first sentence is true, viz : 
 " I, Jehovah, am thy Elohim "; and all of which is a complex of ingenious 
 air castles, if the first sentence is fictitious. If Israel heard the first he 
 heard also the last, for all is included in the first and all depends on it. 
 Therefore the economy of the Bible, looked upon from this standpoint, is 
 the following : 
 
 All divine revelation is contained in principle in the Sinaic revelation, 
 and all revelation has for its object the instruction of man in his duties, 
 destiny and just expectations, to secure to him the highest good, happiness 
 in time and eternity. 
 
 Moses, who was appointed by Providence to redeem Israel from Egyptian 
 bondage, was also divinely appointed to organize the covenant people, to 
 represent among men God's will and government, and he did organize it 
 by establishing immediate and prophetic laws and institutions on the Sinaic 
 principle with special respect to time and place, to outer circumstances and 
 traditional habits which could not be eradicated at once, and to the moral 
 and religious status of the then civilized portion of the human family. 
 Every law of Moses, excepting only those which were of momentary neces- 
 sity, is the embodiment of a Sinaic principle made tangible and effectual to 
 meet emergencies or regulate affairs at that time and place, so that the 
 principle is eternal and referable to the Sinaic revelation, while the law as 
 such is transitory. All new revelations which Moses is supposed to have 
 had were of an explanatory nature, to him personally, to assist him in the 
 organization of the covenant people on the Sinaic principles. (Compare 
 Exodus xxxiv. 27, 28 ; xiv. 31 ; xix. 5, 6, 9 ; xx. 18, 19, with Deuteronomy 
 iv. 9-14, 35, 36; v. 1-5, 17-30, and parallel passages.) 
 
 The prophets after Moses were the guardians and expounders of the Sinaic 
 revelation in the form of the laws of Moses or in such other forms as time
 
 22 
 
 and circumstances required. The Council of Seventy Elders and the priests 
 were the guardians of the letter and the prophets of the spirit of the di- 
 vine law. Whatever revelations they may have had or whatever miracles 
 they are reported to have wrought were auxiliary only to protect, expound, 
 enforce, apply and advocate the Sinaic revelation, the eternal law under the 
 various emergencies and circumstances. This was their office, their sole 
 function, to which they added not and from which they took nothing away. 
 The first and the last book of the Bible is of the same spirit; every sen- 
 tence of the whole collection is explanatory of the Sinaic revelation. If 
 this is true all is true. 
 
 But here we stand before a miracle ; in fact, besides the creation of the 
 world, the greatest and most marvelous of all miracles ever conceived by 
 the human mind. Is there, can there be any logical ground on which to ac- 
 cept this miracle and believe in it? Human reason revolts against the idea 
 ot miracle. Are there any rational grounds in existence to correct the 
 human reason on this particular point? 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I have attempted this evening to expound the 
 Jewish standpoint as I understood it in regard to prophecy, revelation and 
 the Bible within the bounds of reason, except this one point of the Sinaic 
 revelation, and on this one point I must politely beg you to grant me exten- 
 sion till Friday evening next, when I will make the attempt to pay also 
 this debt.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES OF REVE- 
 LATION COMPARED. 
 
 The spirit of the age, it would appear to me, is concentrated in the one 
 English word emancipation. As in the political life of the civilized na- 
 tions, so in all other spheres and provinces of intellectual activity the Ge- 
 nius of the Ninteenth Century combats the power of authority and seeks 
 emancipation. In our country and in the political arena that combat be- 
 gins with the revolution, triumphs in establishing the principle of freedom 
 and equality, civil and religious liberty, rises gradually to the abolition of 
 slavery, and culminates temporarily in the overthrow of bossism. The 
 same spirit of emancipation rouses the European nations, and makes itself 
 felt up to the very palace of the Russian autocmt, the Vatican and the 
 Mosque of Mecca, although slower in its progress, and beset by more ob- 
 stacles and impediments than in our country. Science and philosophy, 
 art, that most slavish subject of antique models and patterns, yea, also art, 
 commerce and all forms of industry strive to liberate themselves from au- 
 thority,' seek emancipation. We must be free, is the categorical imperative 
 of our'age. 
 
 The idea of revelation is identical with that of authority. Therefore, the 
 consciousness of the time objects to it. Many intelligent, conscientious, 
 and even religious'men, believing in.the self- sufficiency of human reason, re 
 ject'the theory of revelation. I believe, however, that I have proved in a 
 former lecture of this series that this theory is not contrary to reason, and 
 is in perfect harmony with undoubted natural phenomena; to which I beg 
 leave to add here, that in the face of empiric facts all objections of reason 
 are unreasonable, since facts will not remodel themselves to correspond 
 with our ideas, reason must modify its decisions to identify its ideas with 
 the empiric facts. Well, then revelation is represented to us as an empiric 
 fact, which is in nowise invalidated by the objections of our reason or the 
 consciousness of our age, as the question is not whether we understand or 
 appreciate it ; the only legitimate inquiry could be, does the historical tes- 
 timony presented to us warrant the belief that such an event transpired? 
 
 On]the other hand it must be admitted that historical testimony only is
 
 24 
 
 admissible in establishing a historical fact. Let us review some of the tes- 
 timony which we must reject. In consideration of what has been said be- 
 fore on the subject of miracles, it must be self-understood that the testi- 
 mony of miracles is no evidence of revelation, because in the first place 
 there exists no logical connection between the accident of the miracle and 
 the substance of the revelation. If, for instance, any person would maintain 
 that God revealed to him or her that three times three are ten, and, in proof 
 of his divine mission, would cause the hills in our vicinity to skip like" 
 rams, many of us might be overawed and believe, while reasoning men 
 would say they knew not how that man performed that task and would 
 continue in their belief that three times three, are nine, as the skipping 'of 
 the hills and a mathematical verity have not the least connection with one 
 another. 
 
 Still less weighty is the narrated miracle ; even if it was proved that the 
 narrator or writer was an eye-witness. Quite a number of doubts naturally 
 arise in the mind, and the hearer or reader is apt to ask himself questions of 
 this kind : Was it the author's intention to report truth or fiction? Did he 
 write to inform or to edify? If he intended to report truth, did he see arid 
 hear correctly, was he in a state of mind and in the position to compre- 
 hend well whatever he did see or hear? Did the writer not amplify and 
 exaggerate, did he not employ figurative and symbolical language to give 
 poetical ornamentation to common and natural events? Did he not write 
 postfestum from popular traditions colored by poetical fancy? These and 
 other questions of the same nature render the written or narrated miracle 
 unfit and untoward as testimony to establish truth. 
 
 Again, miracles must be believed, they can never appeal to reason. Each 
 miracle requires a separate act of belief. Those who expect us to believe 
 in revelation which is a miracle according to that supernatural standpoint, 
 and then want us to believe another number of miracles in order to estab- 
 lish the fact of revelation, evidently ask too much of the reasoning man. 
 We can more easily believe one than a dozen miracles, especially if any one 
 suffices to prove the dominion of mind over matter, and the one, as is the case 
 in the Sinaic revelation, conveys all 'the instruction to the human mind 
 which it needs, to understand the relation between God and man, and af- 
 fords him a valid standard of truth and righteousness. Nor can we, by 
 the aid of a thousand miracles, do better than believe that one which we do 
 believe. It does not improve the case. 
 
 The same precisely is the case with prophecy or prediction and its ful- 
 fillment. It has no logical connection whatever with the substance of any 
 supposed revelation. If a man predicted one event or ten and more, which 
 ally came to pass, it is no convincing criterion that every other state-
 
 25 
 
 ment of his must be undoubtedly true, or that God has selected him as an 
 organ of revelation ; and besides this the supposed predictions are subject 
 to all the doubts raised against miracles. 
 
 The other aspect of this point is no less invalid as a proof of revelation. 
 To maintain that any person must be, or has been, the organon of revela- 
 tion, because preceding prophets predicted his coming, his life and death, 
 is again the same thing as above, viz : to believe in many miracles where 
 one suffices. Each of those predictions must have been a miracle. Be- 
 sides, predictions are made in words which must be expounded, expound- 
 ers widely differ in opinions, and evidently there exists no final authority in 
 this case to decide those differences ; hence it could at no time be said with 
 any degree of certainty that the person who, in the opinion of one class, 
 accidentally corresponds to those predictions, was actually the object 
 thereof, or that not a thousand or more persons may exist hereafter to 
 correspond as well, or even better, to those predictions. ' With all those 
 doubts surrounding the testimony, no impartial judge could admit them as 
 evidence to establish the fact of revelation, if it be denied on the ground of 
 reason which rejects revelation, or on the ground of Judaism, which main- 
 tains the sufficiency of the Sinaic revelation. All this, however, does not 
 prove that no miracles have been wrought, and no events predicted by in- 
 spired men. It is absurd to reason against facts because we can not under- 
 stand them ; it merely sets forth that one miracle can not be proved by 
 others, every one of which is without proof, in fact. Therefore, we must 
 come back to the historical evidence. 
 
 The Sinaic revelation announces itself in the sources as a fact which trans- 
 pired in broad daylight before the eyes of a whole nation of men, women and 
 children. The Book informs us, " And all the people perceived the thun- 
 ders and the lightnings and the voice of the cornet and the smoking 
 mount; the people saw, were moved, and stood afar off." Also the people 
 said to Moses, " Speak thou unto us and we will listen, and let not (further) 
 God speak to us, lest we die." So they also said, " This day have we 
 seen that God speaketh to man and he liveth." Whoever reads the corre- 
 sponding chapters of Exodus and Deuteronomy must feel convinced that 
 the author thereof intended to narrate a fact of which he was an eye witness, 
 and this fact is that all the people heard the substance of the revelation , 
 and stood in awe before the accompanying demonstrations. There is no 
 attempt at poetical embellishment or rhetorical ornamentation ; it is fact, 
 fact, fact which the author intended to narrate. 
 
 A whole nation saw and heard the Sinaic revelation. This is one of the 
 main points, for this never occurred again, neither before nor after that 
 
 4
 
 26 
 
 memorable event. The witnesses of all miraculous events recorded in the 
 Old and New Testaments were small in number, and the correctness of their 
 perceptions and conceptions might justly be questioned, even if the reports 
 are correct. But in this case a nation is the witness, a nation which 
 by preceding events had been gradually prepared to be the recipient of a 
 revelation prepared by the ancestral traditions and a succession of affairs 
 which raised them from misery and slavery to liberty and triumph, and 
 roused them from despair and stupor to the very pinnacle of enthusiasm 
 and inspiration. Here a supernatural fact announces itself with natural 
 antecedents, a purely intellectual fact with a whole nation as its witness. 
 No other revelation in any sacred book of Jews, Christians, Mohammedans 
 or Heathens steps upon the stage of existence with that force of internal 
 evidence as did the Sinaic revelation. The reader of those chapters of Scrip- 
 tures is forced to declare the whole as a piece of invention or accept it as a 
 fact, no middle ground is possible. No sane man can prove it an invention, 
 while in favor of its truth there are also the following grounds : 
 
 The second point in the historical argument is the united testimony of 
 the whole Hebrew people during all the centuries after that revelation. 
 The Hebrew people developed itself and its institutions, its religion and its 
 government and its code of ethics, its character and its entire history from 
 and upon that very foundation of the Sinaic re venation. Three thousand 
 years of a nation's life and history are perhaps the most conclusive evidence 
 to establish a fact, and this evidence supports the Sinaic revelation. The 
 Hebrews never denied, never gainsaid, never doubted. The Bible is full of 
 glorifications of Sinai, yea, the whole Bible is built upon it. The Apocry- 
 pha and the Grecian- Jewish writings know and acknowledge it. The 
 Mishna and the Talmud, the entire ancient Jewish literature is brimful of 
 it. The Jewish metaphysicians and philosophers down to Mendelssohn and 
 Steinheim corrobarate and expound it. The most glorious minds of the 
 nation expounded and promulgated it. Prophet and sage, philosopher and 
 historian, reasoner and believer accepted it; what right has any rational 
 man to doubt it? Here is the testimony of a nation from the very begin- 
 ning and all the centuries of its long history, who, from any standpoint of 
 reason, will gainsay it? "Guard thy tongue against evil (speech) and thy 
 lips from speaking deceit." 
 
 That is not all, however, the witnesses are still more numerous and the 
 testimony much stronger. The two systems of Christianity and the Islam 
 are built upon the substance of the Sinaic revelation because it is a fact, 
 consequently all their votaries from the] very beginning to this day acknowl- 
 edge it, and believe it, and stand in awe before the thunders and lightnings 
 of Sinai. The fundamental idea of right and wrong, truth and falsehood^
 
 27 
 
 God, man and their relation, human duty, dignity and destiny, u What man 
 must do to live with them," the guide, the chart, the compass for man and 
 nations, among Jews, Christians and Mohammedans are taken from the 
 Sinaic revelation and based upon the fact of revelation. So God declared we 
 should do, is the fundamental principle of civilization which directs all and 
 to which all conscientious men, consciously or unconsciously, appeal. 
 
 Therefore, while Jew and Mohammedan contradict the special Christian 
 revelation, and Jew and Christian deny the special Mohammedan revela- 
 tion, and the very nation among whom Christianity was begotten gainsay 
 its divinity; all of them, Jew, Christian and Mohammedan, unanimously 
 affirm, confirm and indorse the Sinaic revelation. No other revelation is 
 supported by similar pillars of testimony, none rests upon as solid a histor- 
 ical evidence, none can boast upon that argumentum a consensu gentium as 
 the Sinaic revelation, so that the worst of all skeptics, if he reason correctly, 
 and the strictest adherent to the all-sufficiency of human reason could only 
 come to the conclusion, if any revelation is true, the Sinaic revelation must 
 be; if this is not all the others are fabrics of falsehood. But then we would 
 have to say, all men are neither fools nor knaves, all men know more than 
 any one, if all men believe and have believed a falsehood, then all of them 
 reason erroneously, consequently human reason must be erroneous, which 
 the advocates of the all-sufficiency of human reason could not admit with- 
 out gross self-contradiction. The historical testimony as it is undoubtedly 
 before us, confirms the fact of the Sinaic revelation, and this is the only 
 species of evidence to establish a fact in the consciousness of reason. 
 
 Well, then, here is the main point of "Agreement "among Jews and Gen- 
 tiles, among all religions and all special forms of civilization in the Nine- 
 teenth Century. Starting from this solid basis, in which reason and faith 
 concur, we ought to be able to overcome our u Disagreements " in the very 
 light and spirit of our age and our country. Let all good men reason to 
 bring forth agreement from disagreement and replace the fanatical and 
 fantastical war cries by salutations of peace. Silence the savage martial 
 song and sing the beautiful melodies of fraternizing humanity, that the 
 Psalmist's benign vision be fulfilled. " Jehovah will give might to his peo- 
 ple, Jehovah bless his people with peace."
 
 V. 
 
 THE LAWS OF MOSES AND THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 
 
 The progress of the human family is a law of history, hence a revelation of 
 Providence as true and sacred as the origination of the cosmos, which re- 
 vealed the power and wisdom of the Maker of all things in the beginning. 
 Whoever counteracts the laws of nature is a sinner, whose punishment is 
 inevitable. Whoever rebels against the law of history, and the progress of 
 the human family is such a law, can be no less a sinner against the same 
 Maker, Providence, the Eternal God, who says, " Mine is vengeance and 
 recompense." By accumulation of the material progress is achieved. Hence 
 when and where the means of preservation and promulgation were limited, 
 the progress was slow, almost imperceptible at certain times and places. 
 These means having grown to perfection almost by typography, the appli- 
 cation of steam and electricity, the progress is now so much more marked, 
 rapid and universal than heretofore. Still it is always the same law of 
 progress which underlies the history of the race, enacted by the Creator of 
 man and engrossed on human nature. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that no institution, no precept or system of pre- 
 cepts, no form of worship and no code of ethics claiming to be of divine 
 origin, could have the tendency of stopping or even retarding the onwafd 
 march of humanity from lower to higher conditions. Therefore no relig- 
 ious system nor any form of government which hinders mankind in its 
 natural progress could be of divine origin. Its course bears the imprint 
 and historical evidence of its own transitory nature ; while that which is 
 originally divine is eternal. 
 
 If this postulate is true, and all of us feel instinctively that it must be, 
 while no honest student of history can gainsay it, then the question arises, 
 what about the Laws of Moses? If all of them are of direct divine origin, 
 each and all of them must be eternal and subservient to the progress of hu- 
 manity. This is evidently not the case. The Laws of Moses contain plan and 
 specification for the construction of a sanctuary and its furniture, built but 
 once and then never again. They advance minute prescriptions of a sacri- 
 ficial polity, a Levitical priesthood, their garments, performances and ob- 
 servances, their required cleanness and the taxes and gifts of the people
 
 secured to them by law ; all of which were not observed by the Hebrews in 
 the Babylonian captivity, although there were among them prophets like 
 Ezekiel, and have not been observed by them ever since the Romans under 
 Titus destroyed the temple and altar at Jerusalem, and none of their most 
 pious teachers admonished them to observe these laws outside of the Holy 
 Land. On the contrary those teachers maintained that to offer a sacrifice 
 outside of Mount Moriah was a sin punishable with Kharath " to be cut off." 
 And yet none can maintain that the reinstitution of the sacrificial polity 
 would advance the progress or any special interest of humanity. 
 
 Again the penal laws of Moses, capital punishment included, in course 
 of time were radically changed and a number of them abolished by the 
 ancient Hebrews themselves and in Palestine, where they lived under the 
 Law and were devoutly attached to it. Yet no philanthropic jurist will main- 
 tain that the re-enforcement of those penal laws would advance the cause 
 of humanity and accelerate the progress of justice, liberty and enlight- 
 enment. 
 
 The same is the case with the laws concerning the Jubilee and Sabbath 
 years, together with the right of possession and personal freedom con- 
 nected with them, as laid down by Moses, and they are fundamental in his 
 policy ; and his democratic or theocratic form of government, which was 
 changed already in the time of Samuel and Saul ; and quite a number of 
 external observances which Jew, Christian and Mohammedan fail to observe. 
 
 Again, while the Deutero-Isaiah told his people that as rain and snow 
 coming down from heaven return not thither before they have accomplished 
 their object in enlivening, fructifying and blessing the earth and the off- 
 spring of her lap, " So, even so, shall be my word which goeth forth from 
 my mouth ; it shall not return empty to me, unless it hath done what I de- 
 sire, and hath caused to prosper as I sent it." (Isaiah Iv. 10, 11.) While 
 the last of the prophets, Malachi, admonished his people, " Remember ye 
 the law of Moses my servant which I commanded unto him in Horeb" ; 
 and Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have said that not a tittle nor an iota of 
 the Law should remain unfulfilled, that he had not come to abolish but to ful- 
 fill the Law ; and according to his biographers he did obey and practice the 
 Laws of Moses and even those of the Pharisees. We find, on the other hand, 
 that the Hebrews in the Babylonian captivity did not observe the whole law ; 
 that even Ezra and Nehemiah changed some and abolished other provisions of 
 the Law; that the ancient expounders thereof established the rules, (1) that 
 commendatory laws depending in practice upon a fixed time are not ob- 
 ligatory upon woman; and (2) that all lws depending in practice upon the 
 locality or soil of Palestine are obligatory upon none outside thereof; 
 and Paul of Tarsus, on the same principle, declared the Law abrogated for
 
 -SO- 
 
 all his converts who resided outside of Palestine, as he was acknowledged 
 merely as the Apostle to the Gentiles, hence those living outside of Pal- 
 estine. And now there is a Babylonian confusion among Jews and Gen- 
 tiles, all of them acting without a principle in regard to the laws of Moses. 
 Now they tell us that you must do this, or you must not do that, for so God 
 commanded through Moses ; and the next moment they do as they please, 
 as if a Moses or a Law of Moses had never existed. They speak of the di- 
 vinity of the Law, or even the divinity of the Law, the Prophets and 
 the Gospel, and eat blood and the flesh of the swine, cut short the 
 hairs of their heads and shave their beards, wear garments of linen 
 and woolen mixed, pray to Jesus and make Sabbath laws for Sunday, 
 as though there were no such book in existence as the Bible. There 
 is an utter confusion with a perfect absence of principle in this matter, 
 and nobody can tell why or wherefore. And yet it can not be denied that 
 the word of God must be eternal. No righteous man must live and act 
 contrary to the revealed will of God. Revelation can not be changed by 
 revelation. " God is no man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he 
 should repent." Eternity is the criterion of the revealed. Nor can it be denied 
 that there are laws in the code of Moses which the progress of humanity, the 
 progress of ages, of necessity, did change and they could not be enforced 
 again. And it must be admitted that one of the objects of the Sinaic revela- 
 tion was that the people should believe in Moses. At the very threshold of 
 the history of revelation Moses objected, " And they will not believe in rne," 
 and God assured him they would. At the Red Sea it is stated particularly, 
 " And they believed in Jehovah and Moses, His servant." But this belief, 
 produced by miracle, says Mosefe Maimonides, was infirm and untenable ; 
 therefore God says again to Moses, " Behold, I come to thee in the thick cloud, 
 that the people hear when I speak unto thee, and they shall believe also in 
 thee forever." And it appears his contemporaries did, when after the reve- 
 lation on Sinai they said, " Speak thou to us and we will hearken, but let 
 not God speak to us, lest we die ;" and posterity testified, " And there did 
 not arise a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom God instructed face to face." 
 Here is evidently a dilemma for the conscientious man who seeks a firm 
 standpoint in the word of God. He feels the necessity of being an honest 
 and upright man, a child of the living God in time and eternity. He 
 wants certainty in all matters of rectitude and righteousness, certainty for 
 his hopes and expectations, certainty to satisfy his conscience ; and yet he 
 dare not rebel against the law of progress, he can not change the past 
 events of history which influenced him and society to be as they are. This 
 inquiry is certainly of paramount importance to all good men, all who de- 
 sire to be right with God and man, to all who are not foolish enough to be-
 
 31 
 
 lieve that " my individual reason and conscience suffice to guide me heav- 
 ward, and to form my character according to the law of God." Who shall 
 give us a decisive answer to this query? Where is the authority upon 
 which we could safely rely in this point? I think the best authority on this 
 point must be Moses himself. Like every wise legislator he ought to point 
 out to us which of his laws were intended for all generations and are uni- 
 versal, and which of them were temporary and local or tribal only, when 
 and how the latter might be amended or repealed in the progress of ages. 
 Let us see. 
 
 The Sinaic revelation with its universal precepts and categories of the 
 moral law announces itself as THE Law of the Covenant between God and 
 Israel, hence between God and all human beings who are of Israel in spirit 
 and practice. This is certainly the sense of the 5th and 6th verses of 
 Exodus xix. If you will do as I command, says God to Israel, you shall 
 be to me a peculiar people, a select nation for the education of the human 
 family, " For mine is the whole earth," says the divine message, which is 
 the home of God's children all. And then again God said to Moses, to 
 writedown THESE WOKDS, upon which depend the covenant between him 
 and Israel ; " And he did write upon the tables the words of the covenant, 
 the ten words," the Decalogue. (Exodus xxxiv. 27, 28.) And again, in the 
 last days of his life, when the hoary redeemer and father of his nation re- 
 viewed the past and admonished them to obey God's Law in the future, 
 that they may live and prosper, and referring again to the glorious event of 
 the Sinaic revelation and the covenant, he tells them again almost in the 
 same words, " And he told you his covenant, what he commanded you to 
 do, the ten words; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone." (Deut. iv. 
 13.) It is concerning the substance of the Sinaic revelation that all the 
 people unanimously exclaimed, " Whatever God hath said, we will do" 
 (Exodus xix. 8), and concerning the ordinances added by Moses they 
 added to the above, "And we will hearken." (Ibid. xxiv. 7.) No pen 
 could express an author's intention clearer, more distinct, and more pre- 
 cise than the pen of Moses placed before posterity the great facts, that 
 God's covenant with Israel, hence His universal and eternal covenant with 
 man, that covenant of the divine love which the Father makes with His 
 children, of elevation, redemption and salvation, depends on no other law, 
 precept, doctrine, reasoning or revelation, besides the substance of the Si- 
 naic revelation. As perspicuously as words can express thoughts, he tells 
 his people, as long as you will obey and do that which God has taught you 
 in that Sinaic revelation, of which the Decalogue is the briefest abstract 
 which could be made, so long shall you be God's people, the children 
 of the house, the educators of mankind, the unifying element of the human
 
 32 
 
 race upon the eternal constitution of righteousness and under the glorious 
 dome of Heaven's truth and the Father's love. The covenant between 
 God and man, this is the clear sense of Scriptures, depends on God's Law 
 and man's obedience to the best of hid knowledge. The righteous man is 
 the child of God, and God's Law defines in a few words the signification of 
 that most important term, by which man rises to the height of perfection 
 and eternal life, and the human family is united and fraternized to pros- 
 perity and happiness. 
 
 If this is so, the question arises, where are the glory and greatness of Mo- 
 ses whom God instructed face to face? Where are the greatness, useful- 
 ness and necessity of the laws of Moses? We answer, Moses would be great 
 and glorious enough, if he was only the redeemer of Israel, the first success- 
 ful apostle of liberty and human rights, and the organ of divine revelation, 
 the first bearer and exponent oi' that redeeming truth which elevates man 
 to a child of God. But he was more than that, he was the greatest legis- 
 lator and statesman in history, whose legislation and political creation out- 
 lasted all centuries and all revolutions of the past. He bequeathed to 
 posterity the most wonderful five-act drama in the five books of Moses, 
 the most colossal and indestructible monument in the immortal Hebrew 
 people and most lasting influence upon the legislation of the civilized world. 
 
 Critics who find ever as many mistakes and shortcomings in Moses are 
 either too unwise or too uncharitable to judge a great statesman, whose 
 object of existence is concentrated in the problem which he solves. The 
 problem which Moses solved was immense. He moved a whole nation 
 from their homes to the wilderness, removed from the necks of the multitude 
 the shackels of slavery, organized out of that material an ideal nation to 
 outlast all others, and did all that not only in direct opposition to the 
 fundamental conceptions and domineering institutions of Egypt and the 
 most advanced nations of the age, but on the eternal principles of human 
 rights and liberty, justice, equality, pure ethics and religion, on the very 
 precepts and laws of the Sinaic revelation. No wonder that he was 
 obliged to tolerate many an inherited evil and subject it to the control of 
 law, to be gradually eradicated, and was under the dire necessity of doing 
 things which, under other circumstance-*, would appear unjust and con- 
 trary to his own laws. Such a statesman, the master mind of such a gigan- 
 tic enterprise must not be judged like other men or legislators. 
 
 The mystery of the Mosaic legislation is in the point that he realized and 
 embodied the precepts and laws of the Sinaic revelation in the laws, in- 
 stitutions and organism of a nation, under the influence of circumstances 
 over which he had no control, to be placed in a country which had to be 
 conquered by the force of arms, and to maintain there its independence sur-
 
 33 
 
 rounded by nations of entirely different and hostile conceptions, habits, 
 beliefs, forms of government, religion and ethics. That was his great work, 
 which he accomplished under the direction and with the aid of the Al- 
 mighty, the governing power and reason of the universe, to whom he stood 
 as much nearer than other men, nearer even than all the other prophets, as 
 the man above the storm-clouds on the top of Mount Blanc stands higher 
 and sees clearer than the man groping about in the mists of the valley. 
 
 Every law of Moses incarnates a Sinaic precept and bases upon a Sinaic 
 law, reducing it to practice under the peculiar circumstances to be con- 
 trolled by law. Precisely the same is the case with all his institutions. So 
 he himself informs us more than once. As, for instance, speaking of the 
 revelation and its substance, he continues, ' And God commanded me at 
 that time to teach you ordinances and statutes, that you do them in the 
 land, to which you pass over to possess it." (Deut. iv. 14.) He only claims 
 to have made ordinances and statutes on the underlying precepts and laws 
 from Sinai, to be observed in that land and nowhere else. He was too 
 meek and too wise a man to presume that his ordinances and statutes 
 should remain unchanged, when the circumstances always change. There- 
 fore he established an authority, a supreme council to expound, extend, 
 amend and change laws (Deut. xvii. 8-13), and told his people to do as that 
 supreme council may decide or ordain. The underlying principles of the 
 Mosaic law are eternal, they are of the precepts and laws revealed on Mount 
 Sinai ; the law, any law, can be no more than the temporary incarnation of 
 a principle, to meet, direct and control temporary circumstances and 
 emergencies. The Mosaic law made the universal substance of the revela- 
 tion practical and national, but it did not place itself in opposition to the 
 eternal law of progress ; on the contrary it acknowledges this universal law 
 of Providence and modulates itself accordingly. We still believe in Moses 
 and his divine authority, as far as he claims it. 
 
 Therefore it is the duty of every conscientious man to know and under- 
 stand the Sinaic revelation first, then the substance and spirit of the Mosaic 
 laws, and especially their underlying principles and precepts, to be guided by 
 them in a life of righteousness and of preparation for life eternal. We can 
 not do more than this. We are not expected to do better. In this point, we 
 think, Jew and Gentile might agree, and reason confirms it. But here quite a 
 number of questions arise in regard to the practice and the proper authority to 
 expound the law, which, our time being over, we can not discuss this even- 
 ing, but I promise to take them up one after the other in the next following 
 lectures. As a general rule let us understand that revelation, like creation, 
 like the work of genius, bursts into existence suddenly and completely.
 
 34 
 
 Evolution can only succeed it, development and practical application can 
 only follow it. "Once God hath spoken (although), twice have I heard 
 it." " It was a great voice, and it continued not," it was never repeated. 
 Since then reason and conscience are the two Cherubim above the ark, 
 from between which we hear the benign voice of the Eternal God.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY AFTER REVELATION. 
 
 Although it must be admitted that this age of emancipation combals 
 against authority, yet it can not be denied that we are always guided 
 and governed by it; the authority of persons, books, institutions, inherited 
 or acquired habits and passions, which we consider superior to ourselves or 
 we consider ourselves inferior to them. The child is led by the authority 
 of parents, nurses, tutors and older companions. The school-boy believes 
 in his text-books, and many remain school-boys all their life-time. With 
 all our pride and self-esteem we accept the best part of our knowledge upon 
 the authority of others. As a general thing we believe and know that 
 which others have imposed upon us, and like best to do that to which others 
 force us most gently, by authority after all. 
 
 There are certain forms of authority which can never be overcome suc- 
 cessfully. For instance, the authority of reason imperiously demands sub- 
 mission. Whatever human reason appreciates as true and good, useful and 
 advantageous, will at last be modulated as law or laws and govern you, me 
 and all, whatever time it may take the logical element to overcome and 
 overthrow its illogical antagonist. 
 
 So we will never be able to overcome the authority of society over the in- 
 dividual. Any one must submit to many, as many know better than one, 
 and none can step out entirely of the magic circle of society. That sup- 
 position that one may be right and all the world about him wrong, is a 
 hypothesis similar to the missing link in Darwinism, which never had ex- 
 istence in reality. Man at best is a clear focus, in which the latent thoughts 
 of his time converge and are reflected in acceptable words and deeds. It 
 is only an inch or two that any man, with the exception of rare genius, 
 overtowers the society in which he lives. Lower your sails, top-lofty demi- 
 gods. Again, the method has not yet been discovered to throw off the au- 
 thority of our own making. We consider it the mildest form, which it is 
 not always, and submit to it with good grace. Here, then, are three differ- 
 ent forms of authority, from which man can not emancipate himself, hence 
 he must regulate them and shape himself to suit these three despots.
 
 36 - 
 
 The authority of our own making, made concrete among us by a nost of 
 executive, legislative and judiciary officers, elected or appointed directly or 
 indirectly, as the case may be, represents the authority of society and 
 is identical with it ; hence in the main the two authorities could be counted 
 as one only. 
 
 The questions, how this authority must be managed to be least oppres- 
 sive to the individual or to minorities, and how much of his natural right 
 the individual must relinquish tr that authority, are as old as society, and 
 have been practically solved by the various forms of government and the 
 huge library of laws which are the bane of the law-student's existence. The 
 debates over these questions form the substance of history, and were the 
 primary causes of oppression and despotism now, of revolts and revolutions 
 then, of periods of satisfaction and much longer intervals of dissatisfaction, 
 until at the eleventh hour of the eighteenth century we have come to the 
 conclusion, that the questions must be solved on three principles, viz, the 
 representative form of government, decentralization of power, and the ap- 
 pointment of rulers by those who are to be ruled by them. It is the mild- 
 est form of coercion, forcing the individual most gently to submit to the 
 authority of society, and is, therefore, most acceptable to him. 
 
 If this is the most proper form of government and the most advanced 
 nations, together with the most enlightened and philanthropic individuals 
 of all other nations, avow that it is then in this one important point Scrip- 
 ture is being fulfilled, when God said to Moses, " And also in thee they 
 shall believe forever." It was Moses, the man Moses, who first proclaimed 
 liberty and equality as the divine right of man, and God's justice as the 
 only crown and scepter of nations, " For justice is God's." It was that 
 same man Moses who, for the first time in history, laid down tho?e three 
 principles of human government, and reared upon them the structure of 
 the Hebrew State, to become in proper time the ideal and model of nations. 
 Please take up once more your Bible, read that old, old Thorah again, and 
 you will, perhaps, be astonished to find in it those very principles which, 
 after centuries of disobedience, misery, bloodshed and heaven-defying 
 wrongs, we have been forced to acknowledge as the salvation of man on 
 earth. Right at the threshold Moses informs us that God, making His cov- 
 enant with Abraham, promised him the land of Canaan, the government of 
 God, and the nation compossd of nations, to descend from him. Thou 
 shalt be Ab Hamon Goyim, " the father 6f a multitude of nations," which 
 is explained afterward by Kehal Goyim, " a congregation of nations" (Gen. 
 xvii. 4; xxviii. 3; xlviii. 4), was God's promise to Abraham, which can 
 only signify a nation composed of nations, an E pluribus unum. On this 
 principle of decentralization the blessing or last will of Jacob (Genesis
 
 -37 - 
 
 xlix.) establishes the twelve tribes organization, which was faithfully 
 maintained in Goshen. On this fundamental fact of twelve independent 
 tribes united in one sovereignty Moses constructed the Hebrew State; and 
 so the universal republic will be constructed, when the long and bloody war 
 in the human family shall be ended, and peace established and secured. 
 
 Then again Moses informs us (Numbers xi. 11 to 25) that God told him 
 to organize the Council of Seventy Elders, to introduce the representative 
 form of government also in the whole nation, as it did exist among the in- 
 dividual tribes ; and he did so, and made it permanent (Deut. xvii. 8 to 13), 
 and reared his system of government on it, so that, with the exception of 
 times of rebellion by the people or its kings, there always existed a supreme 
 representative body in Israel under different names, as the Council of 
 EMers, the Great Synod, the Law Court of the High-priests, the Law Court 
 of the Asmoneans. the Sanhedrin, the Great Assembly called Va'ad hag- 
 Gadol and such other names ; so that the rabbis of the Talmud came to 
 the conclusion that the commandment to have a Sanhedrin is always 
 obligatory on Israel in Palestine and outside thereof. (See Sanhedrin in 
 Yad ha-Chasakah.) 
 
 And again that man Moses commanded his people (Deut. xvi. 18), 
 " Judges and bailiffs shalt thou give unto thee in all thy gates which the 
 Lord thy God will give thee, for thy tribes, and they shall judge the people 
 a righteous judgment." Also the tribal judges and executive officers, we 
 are thus informed, were to be elected or appointed by the people, " Thou 
 shalt give unto thee? and by no other power or authority. Only in time of 
 war, in the organization of the army of defense, Moses permits an excep- 
 tion to this rule, and allows the elected bailiffs to appoint the officers of the 
 host. (Deut. xx. 9.) 
 
 So the lawgiver in the wilderness has laid down the three leading prin- 
 ciples to secure and modify the authority of society, and to render it least 
 oppressive to the individual; and so we, at this end of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, feel ourselves obliged to acknowledge his superior wisdom. Let us 
 see now how he dealt with the authority of reason. 
 
 Reason is one of those cases which can not be reached by a statute of 
 limitation. It has no boundaries. It can not be limited. Man will reason 
 in spite of all danger and peril, even in the face of death. He reflects on 
 the unknowable, and ponders over perpetual motion and the quadrature of 
 the circle. The ocean is not too deep and heaven not too high for reason's 
 strides toward omnipresence, time and space limit not its attempt at in- 
 finity. The only misfortune is, that every man reasons with an individ- 
 ualized intellect and under the influence of accidents. Therefore the di- 
 versity of judgments, conclusions, views and opinions. And yet everybody
 
 -aa- 
 
 is governed by his own reason, which produces anarchy and oppression by 
 the authority of reason. This diversity of opinions and judgments proves 
 that reason is not infallible, as that anarchy and oppression furnish the 
 evidence that unaided human reason is insufficient to govern society and 
 satisfy the individuals thereof. If reason is to govern, the question arises, 
 whose reason? Answer this question as you please, say one potentate or 
 many heads united should govern, you always exclude the great multi- 
 tude, each of whom has a reason and a judgment of his own, tyrannized 
 over by that one potentate or those many heads. 
 
 The expediency to which nations and communities had recourse was the 
 constitution, the charter, or a bill of rights, suppospd to be the product of a 
 nation's reason, to prescribe limits to the power of rulers, legislators and 
 iudges. It is better than nothing, and answers the purpose temporarily, as 
 is evident in the history of nations from the frequent and radical changes 
 of those constitutions and charters, none of which has answered the pur- 
 pose permanently, for each of which is after all the product of some indi- 
 vidual intellects, which can not comprehend the judgment of all and under 
 all circumstances; and none could be universal. 
 
 How did Moses settle this difficult point? Or rather how does he satisfy 
 us on this point? " And the man Moses was very meek," Scripture reports 
 of him. He understood what it meant when God told him, " No man can 
 see me and live" ; he knew and comprehended well what so many of us are 
 so slow to admit, viz : that human reason has its limits, the individual 
 intellect has its boundaries, beyond which it can not go; it must 
 stop somewhere, and so it must start from certain fixed and positive 
 points, where all questions of why and wherefore became illegitimate. 
 Reason itself must stop before its own authority. Ask why this azure 
 dome above your head appears to your eyes blue and spherical, why should 
 it not be rose colored and of oval form? Ask wherefore the stars are clus- 
 tered in heaven in such irregular groups, and the distances between them 
 are so different? Ask why and wherefore is the lily white and the tulip 
 red, or why and wherefore has man no wings, hot four legs or four hands 
 like other animals? Or, if you please, ask what is substance, spirit, matter, 
 force, sensitiveness or consciousness, and you will be convinced that you 
 have arrived at the boundaries of reason, for the wisest of the wise, the 
 princes of science and philosophy can not answer those questions. We 
 know not, is the humiliating confession of the individual intellect and the 
 aggregated wisdom of mankind. We start from a number of given facts 
 and reason from analogy, by comparison and interpretation. We must 
 stop somewhere, because we can not start out with zero, and wherever we
 
 39 
 
 stop to start from, we must have facts of nature or history, or the authority 
 of a superhuman reason. 
 
 So, exactly so did Moses settle this difficult point for his people and for all 
 nations and gen-erations. There is a supreme reason and goodness, super- 
 human and supermundane, and that is the eternal Jehovah, and he makes 
 known to you the universal facts, before which the individual intellect must 
 stop and from which it must start. These moral facts have been actualized 
 in the doings and teachings of the fathers, and are made known to you now 
 under the thunders and lightnings of Sinai as the law of the covenant, the 
 fundamental law of the nation and the nations of all generations and local- 
 ities. So Moses said to his people, and so he speaks to the world forever. 
 From those facts thus given, he added, God commanded me to start out, 
 develop and establish a national code of religion, government and ethics; 
 and starting out with those divine facts, and the unalloyed intention only 
 to actualize those divine teachings in laws and institutions, to realize truth 
 and righteousness, prosperity and happiness to you and all nations who 
 will do like you, I know that God speaks to me and through me, I know 
 that God is with me, instructs and directs me, has chosen you and me to 
 carry out this sublime scheme of salvation. So Moses protected himself 
 and his system, his people and his fellow-men against the despotism and 
 anarchy of individual reason, the ignorance and short-sightedness of the hu- 
 man intellect. Whatever any prophet might tell you, he said to his people, 
 you shall listen to him except when he says, " Let us go and let us worship 
 other gods," then that prophet shall be put to death. This, however, is the 
 beginning of rebellion against the substance of the Sianic revelation, against 
 which none is permitted to go. You dare not go behind the axioms in 
 any science. You must not go against the facts of nature and history. 
 Here are the axioms and facts of God's law, here you must stop, from this 
 point you must start. 
 
 The highest authority therefore after revelation is the Law of Moses, not 
 indeed always in its letter, but always in its spirit, as every law and institu- 
 tion thereof rests upon a Sinaic principle, which does not pass away as 
 times and circumstances and with them the letters of a law and the utility 
 of an institution do. Not only is the promise made to Moses, announced 
 in the same revelation, " And they shall also believe in thee forever," 
 to be fulfilled ; but we have the positive conviction, at which we have 
 arrived at this end of the ninteenth 'century, that in the main princi- 
 ples of public government Moses was as correct as in his theology ; that his 
 sanitary laws, his marital laws, his martial laws, his emancipation laws, his 
 charity laws, and above all his broad and humane injunctions, " Love thy 
 neighbor as thyself" and "Ye shall love the stranger," are as sublime and
 
 40 
 
 divine as was his lofty conception of Deity and humanity, because all was 
 of one cast, all one and the same realization of the same Sinaic princi- 
 ple, although shaped here and there to correspond with the habits and cir- 
 cumstances of that time, people and country. Take for instance his charity 
 laws, and remember that he secured to the poor, widow, orphan and 
 stranger the gleanings of the field, vineyard and olive orchard, the sheaf for- 
 gotten in the field, the corner of the standing corn not to be cut by the 
 owner, and such other gifts. You will see instantly that this particular 
 giving of alms does not relate to the millionaires and merchant princes of 
 these or other days, and can find no literal application among the husband- 
 men of all ages. The letter of the law is abrogated, but its inherent spirit? 
 its underlying principle is eternal. It i as obligatory to-day as it was when 
 Moses announced it in the name of God. This is the case with every law 
 and institution of Moses, which is tribal, local or otherwise accommodating 
 in its wording. Therefore the Law of Moses is the highest authority after 
 revelation. 
 
 For Israel, you want me to add? For Israel only? In the face of truth, 
 I can not and dare not make such an assertion. Revelation can not be 
 undone by revelation. Whatever the Father of mankind has given to his 
 children, belongs to all of them. The words of many Mosaic laws and the 
 nature of his institutions must of necessity be tribal, local and transitory ; 
 the underlying principles are eternal and universal, they are the common 
 property of all men, they are obligatory upon all nations and generations. 
 This is the authority given to reason, given to communities and nations, 
 according to the very words of Moses, to start from the axioms of the 
 Sinaic revelation ; to incarnate those principles, as Moses did and com- 
 manded his successors to do, in constitutions and institutions, in laws and 
 ordinances, in religious, political and social practice. No individual rea- 
 soner, and no nation has a right to deviate from this course, prescribed for 
 all of them by the Almighty God. The progress of mankind to prosperity 
 and happiness, to solidarity, humanity and piety depends upon this very 
 principle ; and most all miseries of the human family rose from the viola- 
 tion thereof. You have not done, and you do not do as God has com- 
 manded you from Sinai, therefore idolatry and slavery, fanaticism and op- 
 pression, immorality and ignorance make you miserable ; such is the voice 
 of God to the nations. Obey and live, hearken and be blessed. Proclaim 
 freedom and equality to all, justice and righteousness for all, charity and 
 good will among all, slay not, steal not, debauch not, lie not and covet not, 
 honor your parents, worship God and keep the Sabbath holy, be conscien- 
 tious with the laws of God, and impart them to your children, let all this 
 be impressed upon your constitutions, and institutions, and you will be the
 
 41 
 
 children of the living God. This is the import of the Sinaic revelation, the 
 message of the Almighty to all nations. If you are anxious to do right and 
 to live, to prosper and progress to happiness, know, understand and com- 
 prehend well the Sinaic revelation, and be guided by God's teachings. Ir 
 you are anxious to apply those divine doctrines to the government of na- 
 tions, learn in and from the Law of Moses how principles are to be incar- 
 nated in practical laws and institutions with reference to time, locality and 
 historical antecedents. God is eternal, his word is eternal, and in this His 
 word He promised to Moses, " And also in thee they shall believe forever."
 
 VII. 
 
 SINAI AND CALVARY COMPARED FROM THE ETHICAL 
 
 STANDPOINT. 
 
 That which is right to one ought to be right to all; and that which is 
 wrong for one must be wrong for all is the cardinal principle of divine 
 ethics in centra-position to such human forms of government, in which 
 might is the source of right (which is also a weak point of Baruch Spinoza), 
 the privileges of some persons and classes and the oppression of others 
 form the substratum of law, as in the feudal system of government, so 
 that the main object of law and government is, to invent and apply the 
 means for one class to check, subject and control the other class. The 
 form of government basing strictly and exclusively upon the moral law is 
 ethical, while all forms of government basing right upon might and law 
 upon existing wrongs, are martial, a state of warfare with the enforced in- 
 tervals of armistice between, among the classes and persons of the same 
 commonwealth, and consequently also of one commonwealth against the 
 other. This martial form of government prevailed among all nations of 
 antiquity, and reached its culminating point in the Roman Empire. The 
 ethical form of government originated in the Sinaic revelation and the Law 
 of Moses, and always remained the ideal of the Hebrew State, however fre- 
 quent the rebellions of kings, priests and people may have been. All laws 
 of antiquity, from Fo, Thoth or Hermes, down to the Justinian code, in- 
 cluding all philosophies of corresponding ages and nations, are based upon 
 the martial form of government ; while the whole body of Jewish Law in 
 Bible, Talmud and post-Talmudical casuists bases upon the ethical form of 
 government. Mistakes were made, of course, by this and that ruler, sage 
 or teacher, but the ground form is invariably as stated. 
 
 The ethical form of government originating in the Sinaic revelation, we 
 may call it divine, as the martial form of government may be called hu- 
 man, although it is, and was often far from being humane. To this may 
 be added, if Judaism signifies the body of doctrine contained in the Sinaic 
 revelation, then the ethical form of government is one of the principal ele- 
 ments thereof, and is in so far Jewish as it was revealed and commanded
 
 43 
 
 first to the Hebrew people, which was appointed to be Am Kadosh, " Holy 
 Nation," in its policy, as well as in its polity, in its government as well as 
 in its religion, in its administration of human affairs, as well as in its di- 
 vine worship and the formation of private character, all of which to center 
 in and radiate from the one fundamental doctrine of the One Holy God who 
 delights in purity, justice and human happiness, and destined man to find 
 his prosperity and happiness in his endeavor to do justice, to love purity 
 and benignity, and to walk in uprightness before God. 
 
 Modern history begins, as is generally maintained, with the origin of 
 Christianity. The Christianity of history, as history developed it, points to 
 Mount Calvary for its starting point, as Judaism points to Mount Sinai. It 
 looks upon the mundane existence, passion, death and resurrection of 
 Jesus of Nazareth as a second revelation, not indeed superseding the Si- 
 naic revelation, for revelation can not undo revelation, but supplementing 
 and explaining it for the benefit also of the Gentiles. 
 
 It is not my intention at present to dispute or discuss the alleged fact ; 
 for the sake of argument I admit the standpoints of both Judaism and 
 Christianity, and will merely attempt to solve the problem whence the moral 
 law has its authority, from Sinai or Calvary. Permit me to remark right 
 here that every religion is beneficial to man, because every one, the rudest 
 feticism not excepted, contains rational and ethical elements, or else man 
 could not have believed in it. Such is the nature of man, that fiction and 
 falsehood prove acceptable to him only in connection with truth and right- 
 eousness. With every religious idea which rises in the mind of man, he 
 rises above the brutal sphere to the region of ideality, and as he rises thus 
 he becomes a better man, less governed by the lower passions and animal 
 instincts, and more eager for a higher and nobler life. Every religious 
 idea is an act of emancipation to the individual, liberating him from the des- 
 potism of sensuality and elevating him to the freedom of mind and spirit, 
 in the same ratio as that religious idea contains truth and the incentive for 
 righteousness. No reasoner, unless he be a fanatic, will oppose religion 
 in any form. It is man's sanctum sanctorum, which none must enter ex- 
 cept the high-priest of human reason, and then only on the Day of 
 Atonement with the overruling idea of peace and atonement, justice and 
 good will to all. 
 
 Let me add here that Christianity has done so large an amount of good 
 and is doing it now, that it certainly must command respect as the religion 
 of three hundred and more millions of people. Least among all men the 
 religious Jew dare attack Christianity with any weapons except the most 
 rational and most charitable, as he maintains that whatever is true and be- 
 nevolent in Christianity is taken from Judaism, so that the Gospels also are
 
 44 
 
 compilations of more ancient Jewish sentences and sentiments, an allega- 
 tion which but lately Professor August Wuensche proved to be a fact, as 
 was done before him by Kalisch, Wise, Nork, Lightfoot and others. The 
 Christianity or rather Chrietology of history, built up by priests, councils, 
 potentates, legislators and dogmatic reasoners, which has only its most dis- 
 tant roots in Calvary, like the Talmuds of the Jews in the Law, and the tra- 
 ditions of the Mohammedans in the Koran, has never been finally estab- 
 lished in any particular point with the consent and to the satisfaction of all 
 Christians. Like everything of historical growth, it must be human and 
 subject to the law of dissolution, hence also to free discussion and com- 
 mentation, without any attack on religion itself. Christology is not Chris- 
 tianity, and dogmatism is not religion. Jesus of Nazareth advanced no 
 dogmas. Hence, from the Christian standpoint it must be admitted that 
 whatever has not been said by Jesus, can not be placed in juxtaposition 
 with the substance of the Sinaic revelation. 
 
 Coming back to the ethical standpoint the question arises, as far as 
 the government, laws and institutions of nations are concerned, did Jesus 
 add anything to the Sinaic revelation or abrogate any of its provis- 
 ions and doctrines? You may look upon it from any known stand- 
 point, and you will always feel obliged to answer this question in the 
 negative. He did not add thereto, nor did he diminish therefrom. He 
 could not. Nobody believing in revelation can, as little as one can improve 
 the totality of creation. He told that young man who inquired of him 
 what he must do to be saved, the very words of the Decalogue, and main- 
 tained even in regard to the Laws of Moses, that not a tittle or an iota 
 thereof should remain unfulfilled, that he had not come to abolish bat to 
 fulfill the Law. He did not say that the Sabbath day was abolished, abro- 
 gated or changed. When the Pharisees censured his disciples for plucking 
 ears in the field on the Sabbath day ; he merely said, as is also in the Jew- 
 ish writings (Mechilta), that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the 
 Sabbath was made for man. If it had been his intention to propose any 
 change in the Sinaic revelation, he must have said so then and there, in- 
 stead of debating the question from the Pharisean standpoint. 
 
 Again, according to the Gospels and Epistles, the main object of Jesus 
 was to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. If you define this Kingdom from 
 the Jewish standpoint, it is a translation of the Hebrew Malchuth Shamayim 
 or the Grecian " theocracy," and it was the aim and object of Jesus to re- 
 store in Israel the ancient democratic theocracy, as a few decades before 
 him the representatives of a great party in Israel had asked it of Pompey. and 
 as during the life-time of Jesus other representatives of the same party asked 
 it of Agustus. In this case, of course, there could be no idea that Jesus wanted
 
 45 
 
 to change an iota in the Sianic revelation, which is the very groundwork 
 and rock of the theocracy. Look upon it from the Christian standpoint and 
 you must admit that the Kingdom of Heaven means nothing in this life and 
 this sublunar world ; it begins with death and refers exclusively to the salva- 
 tion of the soul in the life hereafter. Therefore he is reported to have said, 
 " My Kingdom is not of this world." This is repeated in substance by both 
 Peter and Paul in their respective Epistles, who admonished the primitive 
 Christians to submit to any and every political government, to obey him 
 who bears the sword of authority, as God must have given it to him, and 
 their Christ had not come to interfere with the temporal affairs of man this 
 side of the boundary line of death. Therefore Paul taught that faith, hope 
 and love were sufficient to guide the redeemed ones to salvation in life 
 eternal. Hence it must be admitted, if Jesus had nothing to do with the 
 affairs of this world, nothing with the government of nations and the rights 
 of man, he had nothing to do with ethics, which concerns man in this state 
 of existence first and foremost, and could at no time have thought of add- 
 ing to or taking away from the Sinaic revelation. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount, whether it was actually delivered by Jesus 
 as it is recorded by Matthew, or whether only a portion thereof was 
 delivered at some other place, as Luke maintains (chapter vi. verse 21), 
 or whether it was not delivered at all, as both Mark and John appear 
 to admit by their silence regarding that important document, or 
 whether it was compiled by Matthew of sentences, which the Church 
 held to have been uttered by Jesus ; that very Sermon on the Mount, 
 concerning which Dr. Zipser, Prof. Wuensche and others have furnished the 
 evidence, that every sentiment thereof has its parallel in the old Bible and 
 Talmud ; that very Sermon on the Mount adds not an iota to and takes 
 none away from the ethics contained in the Sinaic revelation, or even in the 
 Laws of Moses. The eccentricities and amplifications supposed to be con- 
 tained in it are easily explained by the circumstances and affairs of that 
 very age. The very patriotic Jews of that day certainly hated their Roman 
 enemies, who oppressed and maltreated them, and were always eager to 
 wage war upon them, which Jesus, like other disciples of the Hillel school, 
 discouraged, maintaining that they could conquer and convert them by 
 love, and by love only. This is the sense of " Love your enemies," although 
 in the Christian theological sense it is after all a mere commentary to the 
 words of Moses, ''Thou shall not hate thy brother in thy heart," " Love thy 
 neighbor as thyself." The Roman law-courts were so corrupt, unjust and op- 
 pressive in Judea, that Jesus warned his people to have nothing to do with 
 them ; rather give a man your cloak, if he takes your undergarment ; walk 
 with him a mile, if he forces you to go one furlong ; if he strikes you on one
 
 - 46 
 
 cheek, humbly offer him the other to kiss or to strike, and keep out of court. 
 This appears to be the sense of those respective passages. But also in the 
 Christian theological sense they are an imitation of what Jeremiah had said 
 centuries before Jesus under similar circumstances. (Lamentations iii. 26-30.) 
 Jesus considered him an adulterer who looked upon his neighbor's wife with 
 impure thoughts, and Moses said, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
 wife." That Jesus, who went to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts as com- 
 manded by Moses, taught the resurrection of the body exactly as the Phar- 
 isees did, risked his life in order to eat the Paschal lamb within the walls 
 of Jerusalem and in a house exactly as the Pharisees prescribed, had cer- 
 tainly no idea of adding to or taking away from the substance of the Sinaic 
 revelation or even the laws of Moses. 
 
 If Jesus has left the ethics of the Old Testament unchanged and unaltered, 
 without addition or diminution, then Calvary has added nothing to the ethics 
 of Sinai. Therefore, what some gentlemen are pleased to call Christian mor- 
 als or Christian ethics are actually Jewish morals or Jewish ethics, which 
 Christendom accepts and indorses. After all, perhaps, the name does not 
 make much difference, although it is always proper to call things by their 
 right names. It offers the advantage in this particular respect that all of 
 us become aware how numerous, essential and important our " agree- 
 ments" are, while our " disagreements'' appear to be chiefly in names. In 
 this case it appears it is also of some importance to know that all Chris- 
 tendom accepts and indorses in theory the ethics, the moral principles of 
 the Sinaic revelation. The same was done by Mohammed, who accused the 
 Jews of having eradicated all passages from their Thorah which pro- 
 phetically referred to him and his work. It is important in this connection to 
 know that all civilized nations agree with Moses in the principle that every 
 State and every government of any country should be built up and con- 
 ducted on the moral principle, on the accepted code of ethics, and only in 
 case of emergencies, over which a nation has no control, is a temporary de- 
 viation from this principle admissible. Change the terms, and before you 
 stands in bold relief the following proposition : All civilized nations agree 
 with Moses in principle or, at least, in theory, that every State and every 
 government of any country should be built up and conducted on the moral 
 principle as revealed from Sinai and reduced to practice by Moses in his 
 construction of the Hebrew State ; hence all existing ethics is Sinaic. That 
 which some gentlemen are pleased to call a Christian country, a Christian 
 State or a Christian government, is in principle Jewish-Sinaic, purely Jew- 
 ish, and only so much thereof can possibly be Christian, as that State, 
 government or country fails to realize and carry into practice of the ethical 
 principles of the Sinaic revelation, since Calvary has not amended the ethics
 
 47 
 
 of Sinai ; and in so far exactly the nations are wrong and the cause of mis- 
 ery and self-destruction. 
 
 In order to judge these matters correctly, it must always be borne in 
 mind that the Arabs and then the Turks stood outside of the Greco-Roman 
 civilization by location, language and government. The elements of hu- 
 man government with which they entered the list of civilized nations, were 
 fragments of Oriental despotism, remains of the Parthian-Persian system and 
 the tribal dominion of patriarchal lawlessness. That heritage impressed itself 
 on the Koran, the national ethics, the government, the history and fatalism 
 of the Islamitic nations, and destroyed to a great extent the beneficial in- 
 fluence of the Sinaic ethics adopted by Mohammed and his expounders. 
 Therefore, the Mohammedans are so far behind European Christians in 
 civilization and culture. The Oriental Christians are not superior to their 
 Islamitic neighbors in this respect. The Occidental Christians, by lan- 
 guage, location and government, were the direct heirs of the Greco-Roman 
 civilization and culture. However often they were overrun by barbarous 
 hordes, revolutionized and overthrown, the ground form of that heritage al- 
 ways rose again from the ruins, and especially among the Latin races. 
 Therefore, the elements of the ancient civilization afforded advantages to 
 the Occidental nations which the Oriental nations did not possess. This 
 is, perhaps, the main cause of the superiority of the Occidental Christians 
 over the Oriental nations. With the Greco-Roman civilization, however, 
 Occidental Christendom inherited also the human elements of Roman 
 government and ethics and the feudal system of its own making. This 
 heritage has impressed itself upon most all institutions and organizations 
 of Christendom, exercised its nugatory influence upon the development of 
 Christology and government, and to a great extent counteracted and neu- 
 tralized the beneficial influence of the ethics from the Sinaic revelation. 
 This is the ground-work of the historic struggle among European nations, 
 which became most conspicuous in the struggle of the Common Law against 
 the Civil Law, the Reformation against the established Church, the bloody 
 revolutions which are still at work, and the attempts of science and phi- 
 losophy to rise above all established authority. 
 
 The Sinaic revelation demands freedom and equality for all members of 
 any commonwealth, and the Christian potentates built up huge despot- 
 isms, with privileged and pariah classes. Therefore, justice was made a 
 mere hand-maid of the thrones and a body-guard of the privileged classes, 
 to the oppression and detriment of the multitudes. Where there is no free- 
 dom and equality there can be no justice. As long as there are privileged 
 and pariah classes, as long .as men are forced into the military straight 
 jacket against their will, as long as society anywhere is divided into lords
 
 48 - 
 
 and human dogs, there can be no freedom, no equality, no justice, hence no 
 government of divine ethics. God said, " Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me," and in Christendom there are worshiped as many gods as there 
 are supposed persons in the Deity; there were made as many demi-gods as 
 there were emperors, kings, princes, popes, cardinals, bishops and other 
 imitations of the Roman Pantheon. God commanded, u Remember the 
 Sabbath-day to keep it holy," and Christendom has abolished the Sabbath- 
 day and forces men by laws and social circumstances to sanction the viola- 
 tion of God's law. " Thou shalt not kill " is the divine law ; war, incessant 
 war, is the human law, and murder is frequently sanctioned besides by in- 
 sufficient laws or the. lack of their enforcement. " Thou shalt not steal " is 
 another divine law, and potentates steal countries and nations, because, as 
 they say, they need them. Government officers steal and teach the people 
 that stealing is not so bad a business after all. And so we might go on for 
 hours, but it would prove no more than these facts do, viz, that the misery 
 and self-destruction of nations rise from their neglect of Sinai, their neglect to 
 form and execute the laws on the ethics of the Sinaic revelation, to establish 
 and maintain government on the ethical principle, as Moses constructed 
 the Hebrew State ; God promised to the seed of Abraham, " And I will be 
 their Elohim" i. e., absolute justice and supreme wisdom shall be the 
 base and superstructure of their government and laws. All revolutions 
 signify the rise of the human family toward the ethical standpoint of the 
 Sinaic revelation. The world Judaizes and has Judaized for the last two 
 thousand years; because there is only one standard of ethics, and that is 
 the Revelation on Mount Sinai.
 
 VIII. 
 FREEDOM THE POSTULATE OF ETHICS. 
 
 Freedom is the word which finds a joyous re-echo in every human heart. 
 It is the Shibboleth of nations, the magic sound from the angel's trumpet of 
 resurrection, a ray of heaven's light penetrating into the vale of darkness. 
 For what are slavery, darkness and death but the loss of freedom, as life, 
 light and liberty are but freedom actualized. Every living creature, like the 
 merry lark, rising skyward with joyous song, feels that freedom is its birth- 
 right, and deprived of it, it mourns its' loss and pines away even unto death. 
 Wherever there is life there is will, and wherever there is will there is volun- 
 tary volition, which is the exercise of freedom ; hence there is no life without 
 freedom and no freedom without life. Nature is a piece of exact mechanism? 
 hence without freedom, to the atomist and monist, who sees in it but iron 
 and relentless laws. The theist, however, who observes in every movement 
 and quality of matter the manifestation of the spirit and the demonstra- 
 tion of life, will and reason, discovers freedom in the concentric as well 
 as in eccentric movements of nature's offspring. Not one leaflet is like the 
 other on the same rose, no two beings are identical, no two leaves on the 
 same tree, no two berries on the same cluster. Crystals also show individ- 
 uality. . 
 
 Freedom is the power (not an abstraction), inherent in the individual to 
 rest or to move and act in obedience only to its own inherent law and its 
 own volition, without compulsion or coercion from abroad. Being a power, 
 it is a function which must emanate from some substance, and this can be 
 spirit only. Hence, wherever we find freedom there must be spirit, in the 
 individual or the cosmos. It is God in the universe, it is human mind in 
 man, as Elihu said to Job, "Verily, it is the spirit in man, and the breath 
 of the Almighty which giveth him understanding." 
 
 Therefore it must be legitimate to maintain that legislation against free- 
 dom is legislation against nature and nature's God. All just legislation 
 must start with the principle of freedom, universal and individual, and must 
 have the ultimate object in view to harmonize the volitions of many free 
 individuals associated for their mutual benefit and the benefit of the human 
 family. Every other legislation is unjust and contrary to the will of God 
 
 7
 
 50 - 
 
 manifested in His works, although it may be momentarily justfiable by 
 emergencies, over which the legislator has no control. Permanent laws 
 must be just and capable of universal application. 
 
 When we speak of revelation and revealed laws, we speak of freedom and 
 justice. For the laws expressed in God's words must be in kind the same 
 as those revealed in His works. The revealed material, as it is before us, 
 appears to be the mundane expression of those supermundane principles of 
 freedom and justice. God is free and just. This appears to be the starting 
 point of the revelation. '' I, Jehovah, am thy Elohim, who brought thee out 
 of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." This is premised with 
 the words, " For mine is the whole earth" ; hence God is not only mightier 
 than the mightiest, as there exists nothing to restrain His power, the earth is 
 His earth, the heaven is His heaven, the world is His world, all subject to His 
 will, but He is also absolutely free, without any compulsion or coercion from 
 abroad, and absolutely just, which is demonstrated in Israel's liberation, and 
 understood per se, inasmuch as he who is absolutely potent and free could 
 only be absolutely just. 
 
 However, God's freedom and justice are indicated there chiefly as a decla- 
 ration of man's freedom, and the foundation for the divine command to man 
 to be just and righteous. If there were no freedom and justice in God, they 
 could not be expected in man. Whatever is not in the whole can not be ex- 
 pected in any part thereof. Demonstrate away freedom, by any method, from 
 nature and nature's God, and it has no hold in human nature. Demonstrate 
 away freedom and there is no justice, no righteousness and no virtue. The 
 pantheists, fatalists and predestinarians know not what they do in their ne- 
 gation of freedom ; they know not that they destroy the postulate of ethics. 
 
 Man's freedom is indicated in the very act of divine legislation, as laws 
 could be ordained only for free agents. None will command the stone to 
 preserve its inertia, when it can not move of its own accord. Nor will an 
 intelligent being command the marble to become a statue, when it can 
 only submit to the sculptor's hands. It is further indicated in the promise 
 of reward to him who shall obey, and punishment to the disobedient, as 
 the principle is already laid down in the premises, " And now if ye will 
 diligently hearken unto my voice, and ye will guard my covenant, ye shall 
 be unto me a peculiar nation," etc. Here is evidently freedom, for the pos- 
 sibility of obedience or disobedience is surmised. The same idea is also 
 expressed in the obligation of the people, the promise to obey, and in the 
 word of God addressed to Moses (Exodus xxiv. 12), "Come up to me, up 
 the mountain, and be there, and I will give the tables of stone and the 
 Thorah and the commandment which I have written to teach them" ; to 
 teach and not to impose on them as an iron necessity, the Thorah and the
 
 51 
 
 commandment. This presupposes freedom. Clearest, however, this prin- 
 ciple is expressed in the event succeeding the Sinaic revelation (Exodus 
 xx. 17), which is expounded in Deuteronomy v. 20-26, thus : The Israel- 
 ites, after having heard and seen the Sinaic revelation, were very much ter- 
 rified, and dreaded to hear the voice of God any longer and any more ; u lest 
 we might die," said they, and they asked Moses to bring them the laws of 
 God, so that they need again not hear the Almighty speak. It is reported 
 then that God consented to the people's proposition, and also said to Mo- 
 ses, u I wish that they had this heart (will) to fear me and to observe all 
 my commandments all the days, that it might be well with them and their 
 children forever." God accords the people's proposition, this sanctions 
 the authority of human reason. God wishes they might always obey His 
 laws, this expresses most forcibly the moral freedom of man, his account- 
 ablity to his Maker, and the principle of justice in God's government. 
 Again and again this principle is expressed in Scriptures most clearly and 
 forcibly (Deut. vii. 11, 12; xi. 26-28; xxx. 15, 16), so that the prophet 
 Isaiah could announce to his people this divine oracle (i. 19), " If ye shall 
 will and hearken, ye shall eat the good of the land ; if ye shall refuse and 
 rebel, the sword shall consume you, for so the mouth of God hath spoken." 
 This last phrase refers to the Sinaic revelation. The two additional and 
 apparently sup^erflous verbs of Thobeh, " If you shall will," and themo'enu^ 
 " If you shall refuse," emphasize the doings and omissions as free will acts, 
 in order to merit the recompense, which the prophet announces. This is 
 the case throughout the old Bible. Freedom is the postulate of ethics and 
 the cause of man's accountability to his Maker. Man is capable of not 
 only receiving and understanding God's law, the expression of His will, but 
 has also the power inherent in his spiritual nature to obey and execute it, 
 to live and act under it, and, therefore, he is accountable to God for all his 
 doings and omissions. There is a moral government in the world, because 
 God is just and man is free. This, according to the Sinaic revelation, is 
 the postulate of ethics. 
 
 Long after the close of the canon, when speculative minds analyzed those 
 doctrines and attempted to solve the problem by discursive reasoning, the 
 questions arose as to how much Satan has to do with the cause of human 
 disobedience and wickedness, and again as to how much God's special 
 grace has to do with man's power to turn from his evil ways and choose 
 again the path of righteousness. In principle this was a limitation of man's 
 freedom. It is not altogether he who sins, as Satan has his share in the 
 disobedience, and we are unable to say how much of it really belongs to his 
 Satanic majesty, and how much to the will of man. Nor is it altogether man 
 who does that which is good and right, as God's special grace has its
 
 52 
 
 share in man's power for good, and none knows which share is largest 
 God's or man's. The rabbis of the Talmud reduced the evil influence upon 
 man to his temperament and natural disposition, and called Satan in this 
 capacity Yetzer ha-Rah, to which they added that in one respect he is Satan, 
 in another the evil disposition, and again in another the angel of death. 
 Paul gave expression to this rabbinical doctrine in a peculiar figure of 
 speech, saying that he had a thorn in his flesh. On the whole those rabbis 
 paid no particular respect to Satan, and would scarcely grant him personal 
 existence, although the later Persian rabbis had their demonology with a 
 number of Satan stories. The Satan story in Matthew iv., partly also in 
 Luke iv., of which Mark had no knowledge and which John did not accept, 
 is undoubtedly an anachronism, and appears to have grown out of one 
 verse in Mark (i. 12), which a later writer amplified in the style of the Mac- 
 cabean story of Hannah and her seven sons, as in Luke, and a still later 
 writer made of it the story as in Matthew. 
 
 As far as the special grace of God, which must move or support man, in order 
 to enable him to overcome sin and to be righteous is concerned, the rabbis 
 of the Talmud admit its mere existence from on high and maintain Hab-ba 
 letaher mesayin lo min hash-Shamayim, " He who cometh to purify himself is 
 assisted from Heaven," which is to say, that the divine influence supports 
 him who, by his own free volition and resolution, endeavors to come out of 
 the bondage of sin, without setting at naught or limiting the free will of 
 man. It is merely maintained that the good has the assistance of Heaven. 
 This, it appears, was also the doctrine of the primitive Christians accord- 
 ing to Clemens, of Alexandria (Strom, vii. 2, 7), Origines (De Princip. iii. 
 22) and others. When the dispute between Pelagius and St. Augustine 
 waxed hot, the doctrine was analyzed and all its elements were discussed. 
 Pelagius adhered to the Jewish doctrine and said (Pelag. in August, de grat. 
 Christi 7), somewhat to this effect; if God, by any special act of grace, 
 must produce in us obedience to this law, then we are led into the absurd- 
 ity that God gave His laws not to us but to His own grace ; but they were 
 given to our free will, which must have the power to observe them, and 
 God's special grace may support it. But the Church had already adopted 
 the doctrine of vicarious atonement by the passions and blood of the Re- 
 deemer. If man, by his own free volition, could overcome sin and walk in 
 the path of righteousness, then this grace of God is inherent in all men and 
 must be an inborn power of human nature. If so, why did Jesus suffer and 
 die? What was gained by his passions and blood? what has the Church to 
 offer to her converts which they do not already possess? where is the su- 
 periority of the Christian faith? Therefore, Augustine prevailed over 
 Pelagius, and imposed upon the Church the whole burden of the original sin,
 
 53 
 
 the fall of the first parents, the siijful nature of all their descendants, the 
 necessity of redemption in consequence thereof by faith in the redeeming 
 power of Christ's blood, shed for the sins of his believers in all generations, 
 and all the logical sequences of that doctrine of redemption, predestination 
 and the damnation not only of all unbelievers, but of many believers as 
 well, who, by the arbitrary and unjust will of God, are destined to eter- 
 nal suffering. 
 
 Thomas de Aquino, the philosophical genius of the Church in the Middle 
 Ages, was the man who formulated and established the Augustinean creed, 
 if it may be called so. On the other hand Duns Scotus and his followers 
 modified it by semi-Pelagian objections, and the questions were not 
 finally settled, when the Reformation overtook the scholastic discussions. 
 Both Melanchton and Martin Luther accepted the whole apparatus of re- 
 demption as it was formulated by Augustine and Thomas de Aquino, until 
 Erasmus forced them to abandon that position in part, while Calvin ac- 
 cepted and advocated the whole theory with all its consequences. Still 
 both Luther and Calvin agreed that man is naturally corrupt, depraved, 
 and impotent to overcome sin and to walk in the path of righteousness. He 
 must be redeemed by his faith in the vicarious atonement of the Redeemer 
 if this faith comes in connection with the election of the candidate by the 
 arbitrary will of God, according to Calvin. Both agree that man has no 
 free will ; the good can not be accomplished without the aid of the Church ; 
 human reason is under the control of Satan ; and yet man is accountable 
 to God for his deeds, and is condemned in his wickedness, although he has 
 no free will, or, according to Qalvin's predestination, no will at all worth 
 speaking of. The attack of F. Socin upon the Armenians produced a 
 change in this doctrine, especially among Liberal Christian sects. Still 
 neither of them can admit the free will of man and his inherent power for 
 doing the good, without some qualification, or else they must deny the re- 
 deeming power of their Christ, inasmuch as there would be nothing left to 
 be redeemed from. If my will is naturally potent enough to do the good, has 
 perfect freedom to do it, and my reason enlightened by the Sinaic revela- 
 tion, which is the common property of all men, guides me to distinguish 
 correctly right from wrong, good from evil, and truth from falsehood, I 
 could not possibly be redeemed from anything by any faith, creed or church. 
 If there is nothing to enslave me, I can not possibly be liberated. There- 
 fore, every Christian must deny free will in order to be a Christian. 
 
 I believe I have fairly stated this " disagreement" between Jew and 
 Christian. It centers in the idea of free will, freedom, which Judaism main- 
 tains without qualification, unless a man's crimes degraded him to bru-
 
 - 64 
 
 tality ; and Christianity in all its various sects must either deny or so 
 modify it that it ceases to be freedom in its proper sense. 
 
 It could not be my intention here to decide the question. I will only 
 call your attention to the practical decision of the civilized world. Moral 
 philosophy, as I believe I have stated in the introduction, can not build 
 up a code of ethics on that particular dogma of the Church. If there 
 were no freedom, there could be no accountability ; there could be nothing in 
 man's doings or omissions which is either positively good or bad, and the 
 moral idea itself evaporate*. Inasmuch as I am not responsible for that 
 which God or Satan does through me, I am not a moral being, no free agent, 
 there is no moral law in man ; it is a mere issue between God and Satan, the 
 causes and objects of which are unknown to man, who is a mere instrument, 
 and no man could possibly build up a system of moral philosophy upon 
 that basis. Therefore, the moral philosophers are under the obligation of re- 
 jecting that particular dogma of the Church, and to build upon the Sinaic 
 theory of personal freedom and accountability, and the general moral gov- 
 ernment. If one or the other philosopher still calls his system of ethics 
 Christian, and not Jewish, which it actually is by its substance, we can 
 only imagine that he has unwittingly abandoned the dogma and returned 
 to the Jewish aspect of morals as the primitive Christians did, whose con- 
 ceptions, as to the incompatibility of the logical sequences of freedom and 
 vicarious atonement, were imperspicuous and undefined. As far as moral 
 philosophy is concerned, so much is certain, the civilized world decides in. 
 favor of the Jewish'doctrine of freedom as the postulate of ethics. 
 
 As the practice is more important than the theory, the governments and 
 legislatures of the civilized countries are more important than moral philos- 
 ophy. The civilized countries the world over make and enforce laws on the 
 principle of moral freedom and the accountability of every sane person of 
 maturity, as though the dogmas of the Church had never existed. The law 
 nowhere admits any criminal's plea, that Satan wrought the evil deed in 
 him, who is but a tool, or that God predestined him for damnation, so^he 
 could not help committing crimed. No offender can justify his misdeeds 
 before the law by the dogma, because the law is based upon the ideas of per- 
 sonal freedom and accountability. No government appoints, and no people 
 elects judges or executors of the law under the supposition that the Holy 
 Ghost will give them wisdom and rectitude, whatever they might have been 
 or have done heretofore. Is that man fit for that position by the requirements 
 of his reason and the uprightness of his will, as demonstrated in his ante- 
 cedents? is the question to be answered entirely irrespective of the dogma. 
 The question is, are his reason and will correct? which means free, energetic 
 and enlightened, and not what does or will God or Satan do through him.
 
 55 
 
 I do not speak of existing prejudices, more or less influential in this or 
 that locality ; I speak of the principle underlying all civil government and 
 legislation; and this is freedom as the postulate of ethics, and not the 
 dogma. Therefore, it must be admitted that the fundamental idea of con- 
 stitutional government, the Rechtsstaal, is Jewish, as expressed in the Si- 
 naic revelation, and not Christian, as advanced by St. Augustine, modu- 
 lated by Thomas de Aquino or Duns Scotus, accepted by the Reformers 
 and impressed on the creeds and catechisms. There is no medium between 
 free and not free. Man must be one or the other. Moral philosophy and 
 all modern governments decide the question in favor of Sinai. If it is not 
 supposed that the vast majority of all reasoning human beings are predes- 
 tined for damnation, it must be admitted that this very majority decides 
 the question in favor of Freedom as the postulate of ethics, and we declare 
 it decided on their responsibility.
 
 IX. 
 PROVIDENCE AND THE DOGMA. 
 
 All thinking men necessarily agree that there is in or above this world of 
 our cogitation a power superior to that of man individually and collectively. 
 NL, .ralists call it Nature, .fatalists call it Fate, scientists invented for 
 it the terms Laws of Nature, pagans named it the Domination of the Gods, 
 philosophers announce it as the Moral Government of the World (die sitt- 
 liche Weltordnung), which is a mere definition of that sovereign exercise of 
 the supreme power which all theists and religionists call Providence or the 
 government of God in this concrete and visible world, the spiritual and 
 moral doings of man. Every language of civilized people has a term or a 
 phrase referring to man's dependency on Providence. The Bible contains 
 the most various terms and phrases to^expreas this idea. The Hebrews of 
 Post-biblical days coined the Hebrew noun Hashgachah for Providence 
 from a verb used in this sense in the Bible, and the popular phrase Im 
 yirtzeh hash-Shem, " If it shall please God, " which has found its way into 
 all modern languages. The biblical term for Providence is Adoni, " Lord," 
 which reappears in the Phoenician Adonis, and is a peculiar plural form of 
 adon, " a human lord or master," to designate God as the sole sovereign of 
 the world ; God revealed in history. According to the Bible record, Abra- 
 ham was the first man who called God Adoni. (Genesis xv. 2.) So it ap- 
 pears, he was the first to recognize the universal government of God, the 
 Unity of Deity, as, according to Moses Maimonides, Abraham was the first 
 who conceived the idea of the cosmos created by the ONE GOD, and there- 
 fore called him Koneh Shamayim ve-Eretz, " Possessor of hesfven and 
 earth " (Genesis xiv. 22), and also " Judge of all the earth." (Ibid. xvii. 25.) 
 The same idea, in the form of Preserver, is expressed in God's name of 
 El-Shaddi, with which, it is said, he made himself known to Abraham 
 (Genesis xvii. 1 and Exodus vi. 3) ; while the idea of special Providence is 
 expressed for the first time in the prayer of Abraham for the wicked people 
 of Sodom and Gomorrah. The logical connection of these ideas is evident. 
 
 From Abraham to Moses the idea of special Providence predominates in 
 the Bible record, because the history of the Abrahamitic family is its main 
 subject. With Moses both aspects reappear in the only proper name of 
 God, the ineffable JEHOVAH, the definition of which is given in Exodus
 
 57 
 
 (iii. 14), " And Elohim said to Moses Ehyeh asher Ehyeh" etc., which 
 signifies not merely I AM, but " I am the eternal being, essentiality and 
 substance of all that is, was or will be," hence of all " Becoming," as the 
 Hebrew verb hayah includes the two ideas of being and becoming, and the 
 latter denotes a mere function of the former. In the same passage the di- 
 vine voice commands Moses to go to the children of Israel and tell them 
 Ehyeh (the first person), which signifies Jehovah (in the third person), 
 " sendeth me to you," no tribal god and no special deity ; the one, only 
 Eternal and Sole God, as high and exalted, as profound and comprehensive 
 or rather infinitely higher than human speculation can conceive Deity ; and 
 add thereto, the divine voice commanded, that this Jehovah is also the God 
 of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom you know as Elohim, 
 Adoni and El-Shaddi, the Creator, Governor and Preserver of the universe, 
 the universal and special Providence. 
 
 All conceptions of tribal, local, special, tutelar or national gods of pagan 
 speculation and modern reproduction fall to the ground, flat and dead, be- 
 fore this simple passage of two verses in Exodus. The idea is clear and 
 evident. The Eternal Being, the cause and substance of all " Becoming," 
 must necessarily be life and love, will and power, self-conscious intellect 
 and sovereign wisdom beyond all knowable and thinkable perfection, as life, 
 love, will and power, self-conscious intellect and wisdom are manifest in 
 the perpetual ' Becoming," in the eternal fitness of things, the beauty and 
 harmony of nature, the teleological construction of living organisms, the 
 functions and manifestations of all living creatures ; and reason can not 
 help admitting that there can be nothing in any effect which is not the 
 cause thereof, and '' Becoming" is the effect of " Being." If that is so, and 
 none has ever been able to gainsay it successfully, then God must be mani- 
 fest in every one of His creatures, as well as in the totality of his creation ; 
 his wisdom, goodness, power and truth must extend to the very lowest as 
 well as the highest of His creatures : and thus He must be Providence, uni- 
 versal and special. So we are told that Moses knew the God of the fathers, 
 and so he was commanded to announce and expound the ineffable One to 
 Israel, so to be made known to all the children of man. 
 
 Permit me, ladies and gentlemen, to deviate for a minute from our sub- 
 ject, in order to remark that there is no positive atheist. There are atheists 
 by levity, persons whose thoughts never reached beyond the sensual sphere, 
 and whose vulgar motto is, 1 do not care. Another class of atheists is 
 made by degradation, they want no God to take cognizance of their mis- 
 deeds and persuade themselves that there is none. Then.come the atheists 
 by the grace of their company. They happened to come in contact with 
 atheists of any class, and being themselves incapable or too indolent to rea-
 
 58 
 
 son correctly and thoroughly, adopt their companions' theories. None of 
 these classes can be called positive in their theories, as they do not rise 
 from the source of logical thought. It is with them a mere aberration of a 
 periodical nature. Scientists may become atheistical by the habit of ex- 
 pounding all phenomena on strictly mechanical principles or by the at- 
 tempt of applying the laws of one science to all of them and to the science 
 of sciences, a systematic understanding of the whole world ( Weltanschau- 
 ung). But none of them has become a positive atheist, if we are to be- 
 lieve their own confessions. Logical reasoners become apparent atheists by 
 overthrowing the evidence of any theistical system, which means nothing 
 positive ; for that which overthrows may be overthrown. It is the particular 
 abstract God of this or that philosophy, or the particular personal God of this 
 or that theology, which, by its inherent defects, irritates reason to refute and 
 then to deny it. In this case the reasoner may abide in the negation, if he 
 be unable to conceive another idea of Deity than the one he refuted," and 
 be an atheist, but only a negative one. Nobody has and none will con- 
 struct a positive evidence that the existence of Deity is impossible, hence 
 there is no positive atheist. I did not count the atheists by fashion, that 
 are numerous in some localities, for they are everything only after a fash- 
 ion, which is hardly worth while mentioning. Anyhow there is nothing 
 positive in it. We return now to our subject. 
 
 With this knowledge of Deity, understood by Moses and comprehended 
 more or less by the intelligent portion of the society about him, we leave the 
 camp in the wilderness and approach Mount Sinai. There we hear Anochi 
 Jehovah Elohecho, and we comprehend at once that this Jehovah is identical 
 with the Elohim, whom we know to be the Creator, Governor and Preserver 
 of the universe, the universal and special Providence of the universe and of 
 every creature thereof, of this and every other nation, of this and every other 
 individual. The very idea of revelation is, that Providence discloses its 
 secrets to man to instruct him, that so the individual man must live and act 
 his part on this stage of existence in order to reap the benefit in store for 
 him in the bountiful lap of benign Providence. So the nation, so the nations 
 must live and act their parts on the stage of history, obedient to the same 
 code of ethics as the individual, in order to exist and prosper under the 
 guidance of Him who shapes the ends and holds in His hands the destinies 
 of the nations. If you, individual or nation, disregard and transgress the 
 law of Providence, you by your own free will place yourselves outside of it, 
 enjoy no longer its benefits, hence you are abandoned to luck, chance and 
 casualty, you drift upon a boundless ocean of incalculable emergencies, and 
 sooner or later, the impetuous billows of crushing casualties will overwhelm 
 and crush you. You rebel against Providence and you forfeit its protec-
 
 - 59 - 
 
 tion, you rebel against sovereign reason and you are abandoned to folly and 
 absurdity, the illogical combat between man and physical nature. This is 
 the sense of the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus, the ever returning refrain 
 of which is, "If you will go with me in rebellion, I will go with you in the 
 violence of rebellion." There are in this world two controlling forces for 
 man, benign and wise Providence, unreasonable and heartless casualty; 
 obey the law of Providence and live, abandon yourselves to casualty and 
 perish. This is the fundamental idea of revelation, and history, with its 
 blood-stained ruins and glory-crowned palaces, testifies to its truth. This is 
 the doctrine of Providence, which can be defined and explained, analyzed and 
 expounded, although nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken from 
 it. Calvary and Mecca have not changed it, the Reformation has not im- 
 proved it, history in all its chapters testifies to it, you and I, all reviewing 
 their mundane careers honestly and impartially, must confirm it. There is 
 a Providence whose laws must be obeyed. 
 
 The main question, however, in this connection is, how does this defini- 
 tion of Providence agree with the principle of freedom which we know to be 
 the postulate of ethics? Both being included in the same Sinaic revelation, 
 they can not exclude one another. The next question suggesting itself is, 
 by what means does Providence manifest itself to reach the human being or 
 beings? These means must be intelligible to human reason or else we could 
 form no idea of the workings of Providence. Well do we know the word of 
 Scriptures, " He maketh the winds his messengers, flaming fire his minis- 
 ters," and the remark in the Talmud, " Providence hath many messengers." 
 But we also know something about the laws of nature and their stability e 
 It is not so easy to believe that a steamer with hundreds of people on board 
 sinks and all of them perish, because all of them were sinners, guilty unto 
 death ; or that a large city is destroyed by conflagration or inundation on 
 account of the sinfulness of its inhabitants ; or that a man walking on the 
 sidewalk steps upon an orange peel, slips, falls and breaks a limb on ac- 
 count of his wickedness ; or that this man is rich and happy on account of 
 his merits and virtues, and the other is poor and wretched on account of his 
 sins. So the balance of justice, it appears, is not so very correct as opti- 
 mists, moralists and preachers maintain. Well we might say that these 
 cases are exceptions to the rule, and the exceptions are very small, hardly 
 more than necessary to establish the rule as such. But when we speak of 
 special Providence in connection with the goodness and wisdom of the Al- 
 mighty, it ought to reach every case. Let us take a closer survey of the 
 matter, perhaps these questions are answerable. 
 
 In as far as Providence signifies the act of providing for the well being 
 and prosperity of God's creatures, the energies of nature to produce abun-
 
 60- 
 
 dantly foreman and beast, the instincts of those creatures, and especially 
 the reason of man to seek and gather in, are all sufficient to admit that 
 this- is a well-provided world. The combat for existence, or rather subsist- 
 ence, is an enormous bubble, an imitation of affairs in a badly managed 
 human society, which bursts at its first contact with reality; for in reality 
 there is plenty for all and ten times more than the living beings on earth 
 can possibly use. But if we speak not of that which we must have, but of 
 what we wish and would like to have, that which is unnecessary to our 
 well-being; and we find how partial Dame Fortune is in distributing her 
 favors, how one must earn a bare livelihood in the sweat of his brow, while 
 this railroad king, that banker, this merchant prince, that cunning specu- 
 lator, this gambler, that robber, this swindler, that adventurer spends hi? 
 years in frolicking and gayety, we must first accuse ourselves who yearn for 
 things which we do not need, and then we must find fault with the organiza- 
 tion of society which violates God's laws and stands in rebellion against the will 
 of Providence to the very extent to which the cunning and successful indi- 
 vidual deprives the laboring man of food, raiment and shelter. There must 
 be a crime in the appetites of individuals and the government of society in 
 exact proportion to the sufferings of a portion of its members ; although 
 wealth and high living are no conclusive evidence of happiness, as poverty 
 and hard labor are no sure criteria of wretchedness. There are as many 
 happj 7 people in this world subsisting on scanty food, in hovels and coarse 
 garments yes, as many, and more than there are happy princes and mil- 
 lionaries. The thermometer with which to gauge human happiness is of a 
 relative nature. The crime is in society, if by its inventions and contri- 
 vances, its ignorance and levity, accidents occur which cost the lives or 
 health of human beings. Providence is correct and faultless ; society is 
 guilty of criminal neglect and ignorance. If we want to enjoy the advan- 
 tages and benefits of our own inventions and ingenuity, which are the pro- 
 ducts of our own free will and reason, we must also take the risk of the mis- 
 takes and errors to which we are liable, and stand the consequences with- 
 out an appeal to the mercy of Providence. In physical nature the laws of 
 God are stable; man is gifted with reason and free will to know and 
 use them to his advantage and prosperity, or misuse them to his own 
 misery and destruction. The law of God is, reason correctly and act in- 
 telligently. This leads us into the modus operandi of Providence. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this and all that, there is a special Providence, and 
 one which does not conflict with man's freedom. History testifies to the reign 
 of universal Providence which shapes the destinies of nations, and nations 
 consist of individuals ; hence he who takes care of nations must also take 
 care of the individuals thereof. We must, in order to understand it, bear
 
 - 61 - 
 
 in mind our definition of the term, which is taken from the words of the 
 prophet Micha (vi. 8). Dogmatic speculations have led many away from 
 plain truth, and prevented them from understanding the plainest statement. 
 So when they say God is almighty, they define, " He can do what he 
 wishes." You ask them, can God commit a folly? can God do the impos- 
 sible? can He make any fact undone? and they must say no, and no again. 
 Therefore, almighty signifies, God is the efficient cause of all beings, hence 
 he possesses all the might; omniscience signifies, God knows all causes 
 and their efficacy in the universe, and he is all-wise signifies, all conse- 
 quences and all results of all efficient causes are evident to him. When 
 we say God is omniscient it does not exclude the freedom of man, because 
 the category of the probable is evidently not included in God's omnis- 
 cience. If that carpenter ascends a rotten ladder to reach the roof, and 
 the ladder breaks and the man sustains injuries, God's knowledge is not 
 increased by that fact, which adds nothing to the contents of intelligence or 
 reason. Where the law is known, single facts falling under that law do not 
 increase the knowledge ; hence it is not necessary that God, because He is 
 perfect, should have the prescience of all particular occurrences within the 
 bounds of probability, when He knows the totality of all possible proba- 
 bilities. All discussions of God's prescience and man's freedom appear to 
 have started from an erroneous conception of the two terms. 
 
 If the province of probability is in the power of man, he is free, and 
 there it must be where God's special Providence is manifested. None, 
 to my knowledge, has explained this point more clearly than Moses Mai- 
 monides. With Aristotle and the Peripatetics he admits that the laws of 
 nature are the laws of Providence, which God changes not, because they 
 are the perfect expressions of His will, wisdom and goodness, although He 
 may momentarily interfere with them for the purpose of realizing particular 
 aims in correspondence with His wisdom and goodness, for God is free. 
 His law is his Providence in the realm of nature. The spirit of man, how- 
 ever, follows other laws, for the spirit is also free, and must be guided by 
 other inherent laws. Hence God's special Providence exercises its influ- 
 ence in and through the spirit of man, as in the case of prophecy. As we 
 stand physically in perpetual connection with this material world, so we 
 stand spiritually in perpetual connection with the eternal spirit. Again as 
 we are at liberty to increase or decrease our natural health and vigor, and 
 become a better or worse receptacle for the benevolent influences of physical 
 nature, or even reduce ourselves to a non-conductor and death ; so in the 
 spiritual realm we may elevate our spiritual nature by obedience to God's 
 laws to the very height of human perfection, which we call nearness unto 
 God, and so we may may degrade our spiritual nature by disobedience and
 
 62 
 
 rebellion to God's law to the low, and even the lowest condition, and be 
 thus distant from the eternal Deity. Those who are near to God are bet- 
 ter receptacles for the divine influence than those at a distance. Special 
 Providence is identical with that influence upon the human mind, only 
 that the better man conceives it better, and is thus partly rewarded for his 
 goodness, and the evil-doer with the clogged reason and hardened heart 
 conceives it more slowly or not at all, and is thus partly punished for his wick- 
 edness. It is through, and by the reason and mind of man that special 
 Providence protects and guides hirn without an} r interference with his free- 
 dom, he being governed by his own inherent law. 
 
 If you wish to stand under the special protection of special Providence 
 you must exert your energies to rise, to climb, to ascend and come as near 
 to your God as you can, and conceiye with ease the advice and counsel ot 
 the Ruler of man. If you neglect this, you expose yourselves to the freaks 
 of casualty and the crushing wheels of fatalities. This is the eternal law, 
 in perfect harmony with freedom and co ordination with the entire law of 
 God. This is the doctrine of special Providence as proclaimed in the 
 Sinaic revelation, to which nothing can be added, nothing taken away. 
 This is the dogma of perfect harmony, of Providence and freedom 
 which I have proposed to discuss this evening, and I am done. There is 
 yet left to consider the nature of sin and atonement in connection with 
 this dogma, which I propose to discuss in another lecture.
 
 X. 
 
 SIN AND ATONEMENT. 
 
 The standard of rectitude is in human reason. That which we call con- 
 science is an instinctive feeling of the human species that whatever is right 
 ought to be done and whatever is wrong ought to be shunned, in consequence 
 thereof righteousness is the cause of man's satisfaction and pleasure, and 
 evil-doing is to him a source of dissatisfaction and pain. Conscience is, 
 therefore, a universal human disposition, a characteristic which distin- 
 guishes him from the animal. Brutes have no conscience either in the des- 
 erts or forests of their original homes, or in their third and fourth generations 
 in the zoological gardens, or in the farmers' stables. Among the lowest 
 types of inferior races of men, the tenor note of conscience is discernible, 
 although the conceptions of right and wrong differ widely among races, na- 
 tions, tribes and individuals, because the definition thereof is the function 
 and office of reason, which, being free, naturally varies, as the results of dis- 
 cursive reasoning generally do. This, however, does not affect the being of 
 that innate disposition and feeling which we call conscience. It is there 
 universally, so that no savage will maintain that he ought to do that which 
 is wrong and shun that which is right in his consciousness. The cause then 
 of the savage's low standard of morals is in the imperfect functions of his 
 reason. As it is in the lowest stage of human development, so it must be 
 in the highest and every intermediate stage, the primary cause is in con- 
 science and the standard of rectitude is in human reason. For rectitude is 
 the desire and determination to do that which reason decides to be right, 
 and not to do the contrary thereof. The rabbis maintained, Ain Am-ha- 
 Aretz Chasid, <k the ignorant could not be a pious man," because his standard 
 of rectitude must be as deficient as his reasoning. Jesus maintained that 
 all sins may be forgiven except sins against the Holy Ghost, which, in the 
 phraseology of those days, signifies the determined resistance against the 
 enlightenment and correction of the reasoning facult}^. Human reason in 
 its state of perfection is the Holy Ghost of Christian and the Ruach hak- 
 Kodesh of Jewish theology. 
 
 Imagine, now, that the souls of all shades of enlightenment be placed be.
 
 64 
 
 fore the throne of sovereign justice occupied by the Omniscient Judge, who 
 knows all doings of man and all motives thereof, all opportunities and fa- 
 cilities together with all hinderances and obstructions on man's path of life, 
 and appeal to your reason for a decision, how must that Sovereign judge 
 every one of those souls? The only proper decision, I think, must be that 
 He judges every one according to his own standard of rectitude, in strict 
 accordance with every man's conscience and consciousness, as said the 
 prophet Jeremiah (xxxii. 19), and as in fact all prophets said, which led 
 Rabbi Joshua ben Chananiah, another of the numerous Jesuses of that very 
 age, in behalf of Israel to protest against the human arrogance of sectaries, 
 who carry their intolerance into Heaven and impose it upon the eternal 
 Deity, and to advance the idea which was formulated thus : Chasidai 
 Ummoth ha-Olam yesh lahem Chelek Volam habba: " Pious Gentiles (heath- 
 ens, infidels, anybody) partake of life and bliss eternal." God judges every 
 man according to his own standard of rectitude. The savage is right if his 
 doings and omissions are in full accordance with his own standard of recti- 
 tude. The Jew, the Christian, the Mohammedan and every other man is 
 right, if his doings and omissions are the dicta of his standard of rectitude. 
 This piece of common sense, I believe, is generally admitted, except in the 
 vulgar theology, although it is held that ignorance of the law is no excuse 
 for crime. This is because we have a right to expect of every man in society 
 to know the Ten Commandments, and crime actually signifies the transgres- 
 sion of any provision thereof. Ignorance is the original sin and stupidity 
 the universal depravity, of which man must be redeemed. But this leads 
 us to another point which we must premise. 
 
 The progress and happiness of society, hence also of every individual 
 thereof, depends on the proximate perfection of the standard of rectitude. 
 The proportion of happiness to that standard is believed to be exact. Man's 
 innate yearning after happiness in connection with his conscience, the neg- 
 ative of which is his dread of pain, naturally prompts him to seek a higher 
 or rather the highest standard of rectitude within his reach. It prompts 
 his reason to seek the best and most reliable definitions of right and wrong. 
 He seeks enlightenment for the sake of happiness. He longs after certainty 
 to form his character and govern his volitions, to be sure of his being right 
 before God and man. This is perhaps the noblest instinct of man and the 
 best he can do, as none can reach perfection. To resist and neglect this in- 
 stinct is a sin against human nature. It is spiritual suicide. , Man is free, 
 he may commit suicide, something which no animal can do; so may he suf- 
 focate in his soul also this purely human instinct and linger at the verge of 
 self-dereliction. We are now prepared to define righteousnes. Right- 
 eousness is the ability or state of man to live and act in exact conformity
 
 65 
 
 with the highest standard of rectitude within his reach. The next and 
 highest step of moral perfection is 'called holiness, which consists of delight 
 in the good and true and repugnance to their opposite. The Sinaic revela- 
 tion is premised with tb.3 divine promise, " And ye shall be unto m3 a king- 
 dom of priests and a HOLY nation, " as the effect to be produced by the 
 revelation. This is repeated by Moses especially in three passages (Leviti- 
 cus xix. 2: xx. 26; xi. 44), to impress on the mind that personal holiness 
 is one of the great objects of the Sinaic revelation, holiness by rectitude, 
 by righteousness and by physical purity. 
 
 In his search after the standard of righteousness man encounters the 
 difficulty of uncertainty. I do not know all, nor do I know best. Many men 
 and certainly all men know more and better than I do. How, then, shall 
 I know that I have fixed for myself the best standard of righteousness? 
 No man of sound sense will deny this, hence every one must remain in a state 
 of uncertainty on this important point. He appeals to human reason, to 
 the experience of mankind crystalized in the religious and moral literatures of 
 the world and in the laws of the different nations ; he becomes more learned 
 but not much wiser, for as in moial philosophy so in the laws the differ- 
 ence of principles is so marked that none can form from them a sure 
 standard of righteousness, one which is certainly the highest within human 
 reach. Therefore, Moses said to his people that the highest standard of 
 righteousness, which will eventually lead you to holiness, to be a holy peo- 
 ple, and the only one in which there is certainty on which you can rely, 
 is not of human origin ; it is in the Sinaic revelation which comes to you 
 from the highest and immutable authority. Therefore, every honest and 
 reasoning man, seeking the highest standard of righteousness, to form his 
 character and to govern his volitions, so as to be right before God and man, 
 will certainly seek it first and foremost in the sources of his religion, which 
 he believes to be of divine origin. And if he succeeds not in finding it 
 there, no all-just God can punish him for non-fulfillment of duty. There- 
 fore, those ancient sages maintained that " Pious Gentiles partake of life 
 and bliss eternal." 
 
 Please, ladies and gentlemen, permit me to interrupt this subject by a 
 petition to those venerable men, who preach such a superabundance of 
 Christian love for so little compensation, a petition in behalf of Jews and 
 Gentiles, of four-fifths of the human family. Let me pray to them thus : 
 Please let us have a share in God's grace, do not exclude us from the 
 Father's house, do not monopolize altogether the love of Him who 
 said, " I love you, saith Jehovah " ; let us have some corner in Heaven, 
 do not send us all in corpore to that bad pl^ce. Please do not prolong
 
 66 
 
 your line of intolerance to Heaven and eternity ; it looks too unkind 
 and too arrogant for any little man to degrade God to an arbitrary 
 despot. If you do it not for the sake of the Father, do it for the sake of 
 the Son, that he appear not so much smaller than that rabbi who form- 
 ulated the Jewish doctrine, " Pious Gentiles partake of life and bliss 
 eternal. " And if you refuse to let us poor creatures go to Heaven, please 
 let us live in peace here on earth. Do not flatter your customers that they 
 are better men and better women than we are, because they believe in your 
 extra doctrines, when the next moment you confess that they are all sin- 
 ners after all. I will stop here and return to our subject. 
 
 After what we have said, it will be easy to define the term sin. The Si- 
 naic revelation, building upon the postulate of freedom, admits that man 
 may sin. It mentions three kinds of sin. For a sinner is he who is first 
 wrong in his motives (Avon), secondly wrong in his action (Pesha), and 
 thirdly wrong in the end or aim of his action (Chatta'oh). There are the 
 very three terms in the revelation supplementary to the Sinaic (Exodus 
 xxxiv. 7), and explanatory of one of its provisions. (Ibid. xx. 5.) We 
 may say, then, according to the Sinaic revelation, that man is a sinner 
 .whose actions are prompted by evil motives, or whose actions are violations 
 of his own acknowledged law of God according to his standard of right- 
 eousness, or also whose actions are productive of evil to others or even to 
 himself. Wherever these three kinds of sin are combined in one action it 
 is a crime. God punishes or forgives sins, and the Law punishes crimes. 
 A sin, according to rabbinical definition, must be an action. The evil 
 thought, some of them "maintain, being actually negative only, as for in- 
 stance unbelief, is not punishable with God, while the good thought, which 
 is actually positive, is counted with the good deed. However, the Sinaic 
 revelation ordains, " Thou shalt not covet, " hence evil thoughts are 
 identical with evil actions. 
 
 A person is not a sinner, because he committed one or more sins at dif- 
 ferent times, as is stated explicitly in Ecclesiastes (vii. 16-20). That writer 
 comes to the conclusion that no Tzaddik, no righteous man, is without his 
 sins. He becomes a Rasha, " a wicked man," if his general.character is 
 more inclined to acts of violence, sensuality and selfishness than to the 
 right and good. So King David defines the term Rasha (Psalms xxxiv. 
 2-5; 1. 16-20) ; so the rabbis of the Talmud and after them Maimonides in 
 the code (Teshubah) understood it. We are, therefore, warranted in main- 
 taining that he is a righteous man, Tzaddik, whose general character is 
 formed and established in conformity with the highest standard of rectitude 
 within his reach. The opposite thereof, i. e., who seeks no standard of rec-
 
 - 67 - 
 
 titude and cares for none, or he who has one and is not guided by it is a 
 wicked man, Rasha. 
 
 It is evident from the Sinaic revelation that God forgives sins ; because it 
 is stated in only one particular case that God will not hold him guiltless 
 who takes His name in vain, and it is plainly stated in the supplementary 
 revelation (Exodus xxxiv. 7), " He forbeareth (or forgiveth) iniquity, trans- 
 gression and sin," which is frequently repeated by Moses and expounded 
 by the prophets in the plainest and most distinct language. It is also 
 evident that none besides God can forgive sins, so we read (Ibid, xxiii. 20, 
 21) that the angel, messenger or prophet whom God promised to send be- 
 fore Israel in order to bring him to the land of promise, would not forgive 
 their transgressions, although God's name or special authority was in him, 
 which says plainly enough that this authority is delegated to none. Man is 
 responsible to God and the law. Either of them may punish him for his 
 misdeeds, and God alone can forgive them. Only in one case, it is said in 
 the Decalogue, that God visits the iniquity of parents upon children to the 
 third and fourth generations, and that is, as all Jewish expounders under- 
 stood it, the iniquity of idolatry in him who knows that there is but one 
 God, and from wicked motives worships others. Maimonides adds thereto 
 that such a wickedness rooted in the head of a family, it may be 
 supposed, will corrupt the whole of it. The third and fourth genera- 
 tions are mentioned, because, as in the case of Joseph (Genesis 1. 23j, so 
 long a man might live and exercise that nugatory influence upon his 
 family. 
 
 The principle, however, expressed in that part of the revelation appears 
 to be, that the good and the true is imperishable in the history of the race ; 
 it bears perpetual fruit and perishes not in the memory of man ; while all 
 that is evil and false is doomed to perish in the next generation or in the 
 third and fourth. This is a law of history as well as of revelation, well 
 understood by the inspired men and the expounders of their words. 
 
 Everlasting punishment, eternal torments, the unquenched fire of hell, 
 spiced with a dose of brimstone, and surrounded by a few teasing and tri- 
 umphant devils, are the products of a rude northern imagination; the 
 Sinaic revelation makes no suggestion of that kind. The whole is the pro- 
 duct of a false speculation, a reasoning not from facts, but from prior con- 
 clusions. If sin means rebellion against the eternal God, its effect in 
 Him must be eternal as He himself is, consequently the punishment 
 must be also eternal. This is the foundation of that doctrine. But man's 
 doings and omissions can only affect him and other men. They can no more 
 affect God than I can affect the solar system by striking a blow upon a rock. 
 God is perfect and immutable ; man's doings and omissions can produce
 
 68 
 
 no change in Him. The Sinaic revelation speaks of a punishment to the 
 third or fourth generations only; all prophets and all history confirm this ; 
 hence theologians had no right to invent that terrifying doctrine in order 
 to frighten ignorant people into the lap of the Church, or to use it as a scare- 
 crow for bearded children. 
 
 The means of atonement also are fully delineated in the Sinaic revela- 
 tion. The people coming out of Egypt are considered to be in a state of 
 sinfulness. (Psalms Ixxviii. 22.) Moses announces to them the command 
 of God, to prepare by various actions of sanctification for the great event, 
 u For on the third day God will descend upon Mount Sinai in the sight of 
 all the people." And the people did prepare as commanded. Prepare for 
 what? To find and understand the loftiest and surest standard of rectitude. 
 This is certainly the first step toward atonement, to prepare for the highest 
 standard of rectitude within our reach ; to feel convinced that we did not 
 know hence, did not do right in the past, which arouses in every just man's 
 heart sorrow, repentance and remorse, the hell fire in the human breast ; 
 and to long and yearn for higher and better knowledge. 
 
 And when the Israelites had received that highest standard of rectitude, 
 they exclaimed :] Na'aseh Veniish'ma " We will do and will obey." ThiH 
 is the second step toward atonement, viz, now. that we are acquainted with 
 the highest and surest standard of rectitude, we resolve and determine that 
 we will be guided by it. So man returns to his God, so he obliterates his 
 own sins, so he changes and reforms his character, so he rises to the dignity 
 of manhood and enables himself to counterpoise and overbalance every 
 misdeed of his by noble, generous and humane deeds ; to extinguish the 
 evil and replace it manifold by the happiness he brings to weeping human- 
 ity and to himself through others. This is the Sinaic system of atone- 
 ment, corroborated by human reason and the facts of history and repeated 
 by the prophets of Israel, especially by Isaiah (Iv. 4-9) and Ezekiel (xviii.). 
 The means of atonement, be they sacrifices according to Moses, or prayer, 
 fasting and alms, according to the rabbis and many Christian teachers, are 
 mere means to express the repentance, the remorse of the sinner, and his 
 yearning after a higher standard of rectitude and the self-control to enable 
 him to do right and to be right before God and man. The means change 
 as man and his habits change, while the principle abides and endures for- 
 ever. All dogmatic speculations and casuistic ordinances are worthless, if 
 they run contrary to the principle, and are, in fact, but means for the time 
 being. 
 
 We can not say that this exposition of doctrine concerning sin and 
 atonement is one of our Agreements or Disagreements, for many Christian 
 sects believe this doctrine, and only express it in other words and symbols,
 
 69 
 
 such as savior, baptism, faith, love, regeneration, second birth, and such 
 other theological fictions, symbols to suggest ideas ; while quite a number 
 of Jews have re?ort to ascetic practices, like those Christians who kill or 
 deaden the flesh, or the Hindoos who do it in fact, in order to appease the 
 angry God and obtain of him atonement. One thing we know to a cer- 
 tainty, that this doctrine harmonizes with reason and is of Sinaic origin; 
 hence, it rests upon the solid basis upon which no other fabric of salvation 
 is built. It harmonizes with man's freedom, with the universal plan of 
 Providence, with the goodness and justice of God; therefore, we believe 
 in it.
 
 XI. 
 IMMORTALITY AND SINAI. 
 
 The belief in the immortality of man's individuality or personality in 
 any of the three forms of resurrection of the body, immortality of the soul, 
 or both forms united, or transmigration of souls, connected with the idea of 
 future reward or punishment or both, is so universal in the human family 
 that a modern writer in Germany (Dcr Seelencult von Julius Lippert), with 
 no small amount of learning, has attempted to prove by facts that man's 
 belief in God or gods is based upon his prior belief in the immortality of 
 the soul. The worship of departed ancestors, the attempts to please and 
 win the favor of the good, to appease or banish the evil spirits, he thinks, 
 led to the worship of God or the gods. Without attempting here any 
 criticism on that theory, it must be admitted from the material compiled in 
 its support, that the Grecian and Roman classical writers, who maintain 
 that ancient Egypt was the country where the doctrine of personal immor- 
 tality was first advanced and taught, were mistaken. They had no knowl- 
 edge of the religions of China and India, none of the tribes and nations 
 preceding the ancient Empires of Babel and Nineveh, of Syria and Pal- 
 estine or of the Arabs* In fact their knowledge of man beyond Greece and 
 Egypt did not even reach far into Ethiopia. Modern researches prove that 
 the idea of personal immortality was universal among the ancient nations 
 or tribes, whose theories and speculations have become known to us; and 
 that the origin thereof is in gray pre-historical ages inaccessible to us now, 
 so that, perhaps, none will ever be able to ascertain where and when it 
 originated. It appears to be an innate consciousness of man that he is an 
 immortal being, which, like the consciousness of freedom, duty, account- 
 ability and ideality in general, can be cultivated and perfected or obscured 
 and extinguished by development or deterioration of human nature. 
 
 It makes no difference, however, whether the Egyptians or all other na- 
 tions prior to Moses were in possession of the belief in immortality ; it must 
 be admitted anyhow that Moses and his cotemporaries must have been in 
 possession thereof; whether they learned it in Egypt or their ancestors 
 brought it with them from the land of the Chaldeans. This is, I think, ad- 
 mitted on all hands. And yet this amounts to circumstantial evidence only
 
 71 - 
 
 that the Hebrews in the time of Moses believed in immortality in this or 
 that form. I think that there exists better evidence to this effect. Let us 
 approach it by the way of history. 
 
 It is not necessary to search into the historic literature of the Hebrews 
 after Josephus Flavius, as none doubts the existence of the belief in per- 
 sonal immortality among the Hebrews subsequent to that time. Josephus 
 narrates (Antiquities xviii. I. 3; Wars II. viii. 11) that there existed in 
 Palestine in the time of the Asmonean Jonathan, hence about 150 B. C., 
 the three sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. One point of dissen- 
 sion among them was the doctrine of immortality. The Pharisees believed 
 in the resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul. The Essenes 
 believed in the immortality of the soul only, with which, it appears, they 
 connected the belief that good men after death become angels of different 
 degrees, like Elijah who became the Angel of the^Covenant or Syndelphos, or 
 like Henoch, who became the Angel Metathron, the supreme scribe in 
 Heaven, or both identical as the angel of prayer, mediator between God and 
 man, the prince of the countenance, the prince of the world, upon which 
 Paul based his Christology : and that the spirits of bad men become evil 
 demons, as the belief was prevalent in the East, and is still in China and 
 elsewhere. The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, says Josephus, 
 although it appears they had another form of belief in immortality different 
 from the two other sects, as will be mentioned below. This record in 
 Josephus proves beyond doubt that in 150 B. C. the doctrine of immortality 
 was already so prevalent and old among the Hebrews that three sects 
 quarreled over the form of the dogma. 
 
 Advancing one step higher up into antiquity we reach the Second Book 
 of the Maccabees, which, being addressed to Aristobul, the tutor of the 
 King (Ptolemy Physcos), must have been written at least two centuries be- 
 fore Josephus. We find in this book the martyr story of Hannah and her 
 seven sons (chapter iv.), who die with the firm conviction and faith in im- 
 mortality and future reward, and the same doctrine is forcibly announced 
 and emphasized in many other passages of the book. (II. Maccabees iii. 1 ; 
 v. 15, 18; vi. 18; xii. 43; xv. 12 and elsewhere.) 
 
 One .step higher, and we reach that very eminent book, called Wisdom 
 of Solomon, which is apocryphal according to Jews and Protestants, and 
 canonical according to Catholics. In my opinion it was written in Pal- 
 estine by the same Aristobul, as a general introduction to his Commen- 
 taries of the Bible which he wrote for that Ptolemy. This book is a sort of 
 Gospel of immortality, in which life eternal, future reward and punishment 
 are made the rock and center of ethics and the final cause of this mundane 
 life.
 
 - 72 
 
 One step higher again, and we stand before Daniel, Ecclesiastes and Job, 
 in which no unprejudiced reader can overlook the frequent expressions 
 given to the immortality doctrine, reward and punishment hereafter. Then 
 we come to Ezekiel (chapter xxxvii.) and much higher up to Isaiah (chap- 
 ters xiv. ; xxv. 8; xxvi. 19) and to the Psalms (xvii. and xlix.), and find 
 the doctrine of immortality generally known, understood and believed in 
 Israel. The Books of Kings and of Samuel especially lead up to David 
 and Samuel with perfect certainty. The Witch of Endor could not have 
 conjured up the spirit of Samuel, and he could not have said to Saul, "To- 
 morrow thou and thy sons will be with me," if immortality was not the gen- 
 eral belief among the Israelites. This story leads us clear back to the Law 
 of Moses. For the Witch of Endor is called in the text BcCalath Ob, Mis- 
 tress of Ob, or one skilled in conjuring up the souls of the deceased to re- 
 veal certain secrets, a mystic art which Saul had attempted to extinguish 
 in Israel in obedience to the Law of Moses, which prohibits expressly and 
 emphatically all species of those mystic arts (Deuteronomy xvii. 9-11), one 
 of which is communion with the souls of the deceased or vulgar spiritualism. 
 Why should Moses have prohibited this mystic practice, if it w.is not preva- 
 lent among his people ; and how could such manipulations find credence 
 among the people, if it did not believe in personal immortality and con- 
 scious existence after death? 
 
 Led back to Moses by a historical chain and with the circumstantial evi- 
 dence recited before, we find also in the Pentateuch quite a number of pas- 
 sages testifying to the prevalence of that belief in the time of Moses and prior 
 thereto. At the very threshold of man's history, we find in Genesis that man 
 was CREATED (bara), as heaven and earth were CREATED, and as was animal 
 life. Only in these three instances the text speaks of creation, in all other 
 instances of original production other terms are used, such as he said, he 
 made, or he formed. This distinguishes man as a third and separate crea- 
 tion. This, according to the sacred text, refers not to the body of man, which 
 was made of the dust of the ground, but to the Tzelem, which made of the 
 body of clay a man. (Genesis i. 27.) "And Elohim created man by his 
 Tzelem." This term is defined in the second chapter to be the Nishmath 
 Chayim (verse 7), by which the body of clay became a living man ; and this 
 was a new creation. This " Breath of Life " or soul of life or life soul, is not 
 a thing which was dead or material at any time. It is not taken from the 
 elements which might be destroyed. It is not an organism which is subject 
 to dissolution. That Tzelem, by which man is in likeness with God, is the 
 Nishmath Chayim, the life-soul, blown into his nostrils by and from the Al- 
 mighty himself; hence a something which never was dead and is not sub- 
 ject to the dominion of death. So almost all Jewish commentators understood
 
 - 73 
 
 those passages in Genesis, which announced man from the very beginning 
 as a being consisting of a body of clay and a deathless soul. Therefore 
 they called the soul Chelelc Eloha mim-ma'al, " the portion of God from on 
 high," and like him not subject to death, the formative principle which 
 ceases not to exist, when the form it produced be broken and destroyed. 
 
 This dualism returns again and again in the Pentateuch. When Rachel 
 died, Scripture narrates, " And it came to pass when her soul went away (or 
 out) when she died." Death is described in this case as the departure of 
 the soul from the body, not as the end of life. When Jacob died (Genesis 
 xlix. 33) we are told that " he was gathered unto his people," or he went home 
 to his ancestors, exactly as all ancient nations with ancestral cultes para- 
 phrased the death of their venerated fathers. Here the idea of meeting his 
 ancestors in heaven is clearly expressed. When Moses sang, "This is my 
 God and I will adore Him, the God of my fathers and I will extol Him " (Ex- 
 odus xvii. 2), he did certainly not mean the dead ancestors, that exist no 
 more and could have no God ; he meant the immortal ancestors who live 
 under the protection of Him, who was also his God, as both Jesus of Naza- 
 reth and Rabbi Gamaliel understood it, that He is not the God of the dead ? 
 He is the God of the living. When that same Moses furthermore exclaimed 
 (Deuteronomy xxxii. 39), " See now, that I, I am He and no Elohim with 
 me ; I kill and I enliven, I crush and I heal, and none can deliver from my 
 hands ; for I lift up my hand to Heaven (Almighty), and I have said, I live 
 forever"; he could only think of life after death and healing after being 
 crushed and added, therefore, the assurance, that God is almighty and life 
 eternal. He must have thought the same when he prayed (Psalms xc. 3), 
 " Thou turnest man to dissolution (not contrition), and sayest, return ye sons 
 of man." David based upon this idea his beautiful expression (Psalms xvi. 
 10), " For thou abandonest not my soul to Sheol, thou sufferest not thy 
 pious ones to see corruption." 
 
 It is one of the errors of speculative theology that it attempted to band- 
 age the eyes of Scripture readers, so as not to see how the Old Testament is 
 full of expressions to prove beyond a doubt that man's personal immortality 
 always was in Israel a universal and established belief, although neither 
 Moses nor the prophets based upon it their system of ethics and divine 
 worship, the reason of which was very plain, and was expressed by the 
 prophet, " No eye besides thine, God, hath seen it, He hath made it to 
 wait for him"; and the rabbi has expressed it thus, " Be not like servants 
 who serve the master for the sake of reward ; be like servants who serve the 
 master not for the sake of rew:.rd, and let the fear of Heaven be upon you." 
 Base your canon of ethics and worship upon the immortality foundation, 
 and you will soon discover that this belief, being a belief and hope only, could 
 never be &o firmly established ? that none could doubt, all know and under-
 
 74 
 
 stand it ; consequently in this case, all men who fail to know and believe, to 
 understand and comprehend this one fundnmental doctrine, lose their moral 
 hold, the very object of all morality and piety ; and so you destroy the very 
 canon of ethics and worship. 
 
 Base your canon of ethics and worship upon the immortality idea, and 
 you have made of it a system of selfishness, that is, you have made morals 
 immoral and worship, blasphemy. You only do what you do and say what 
 you say for the wages you expect to receive. You make of ethics a gar- 
 ment to keep you nice and warm, and of worship a sort, of savings bank in 
 which to deposit your spare pennies for future use. 
 
 Base your canon of ethics and worship upon the immortality doctrine, 
 and you move the center of gravity from this into another world. You make 
 of this life a mere caravansary, where we stop a little while to procure food for 
 the long journey through an unknown wilderness. The consequence of such 
 a teaching, which none could observe better than Moses could in Egypt, is 
 that men care not for this world and this life, their fate and their progress, 
 and become indolent slaves, if the rig-lit man comes to subject them and 
 domineer over them. If a man's interest is not in this life and this world, he, 
 of course, can not care much about either, and can not possibly be such a 
 citizen of a common wealth or such a member of the human family as Moses 
 proposed man should be, free, just, humane and useful. 
 
 After all, we could not possibly know more of life eternal than that it is 
 a continuation of life here, a prolongation of the same straight line, a steady 
 advancing from lower to higher states. We can arrive there only as we 
 prepare ourselves here. No man has a right to expect more than his 
 desert. Justice can not grant more and grace is of the same wisdom with 
 justice. The object of ethics and worship is to unfold, cultivate, enrich and 
 ennoble your soul in this world, and to hope for that world which he has 
 made " to wait for Him." Bishop Warburton might have taken these points 
 into consideration. 
 
 Base your canon of ethics and worship upon the simple foundation of the 
 elevation, progress and perfection of man and mankind, as Moses did, a 
 foundation which none can deny or doubt, and you reach the proper end of 
 human happiness here and hereafter without subjecting your system to the 
 objections just discussed. 
 
 Theologians have so long maintained the absurdity that the common 
 men repeated it thoughtlessly, and extended it to all Hebrews of all ages 
 and zones. Thus "the Jews believe in no eternal life." It is strange that 
 the Jews themselves know nothing of that denial, as is evident from what 
 we have stated already, and becomes self-evident from their theological and 
 traditional literatures. All Jewish exegetics, metaphysicians and philoso- 
 phers up to Philo and Aristobul, of Alexandria, up even to the translators
 
 - 75 - 
 
 of the Septuagint, maintain and expound the doctrine of immortality as 
 purely Jewish doctrine. Again all traditional and rabbinical writings, from 
 beginning to end, represent the belief in future life, reward and punishment 
 as a doctrine of Jewish revelation. In the Talmud and its preceding books, 
 as well, as in every catechism, this belief is announced and emphasized. 
 Hundreds and thousands of books on this subject, some full of absurd super- 
 stitions, have been written on the subject. The Kabbalists and mystics have 
 depicted heaven and hell in as lively a manner as the most successful Meth- 
 odist preacher, only with a little more Oriental imaginatian. The Jewish 
 prayer books are full of it, and the principal and simplest one of all, the 
 Mechalkel Chayim of the Daily Prayers, " Thou sustainest the living in grace, 
 thou revivest the dead in abundant mercy," etc, is believed to have been 
 composed by the men of the Great Synod in the time of Ezra. The very 
 fact that Jesus and his apostles taught the doctrine of immortality in the 
 same form as the Pharisees did, ought to be proof positive that a belief in 
 immortality was in Israel prior to the advent of Jesus; or rather he would 
 not have taught immortality if he had not found it in Israel. 
 
 The most telling, perhaps, and also the strangest passage in this connec- 
 tion is that ancient Mishnah in Sanhedrin, " And these are the persons who 
 have no share in life to come, he who denies that the resurrection of the 
 dead is taught in the Thorah, who maintains there is no Tfiorah from 
 Heaven, and the Epicurean. This points to the person who denies resur- 
 rection, revelation, and the existence of Deity, as did the Epicurean?. But 
 it says, besides, that one must believe, immortality or resurrection is taught 
 in the Thorah, by Moses, we might say, and this is the strange point in that 
 passage. It shows that all Jews, or at least all Pharisees and Essenes, be- 
 lieved that Moses did teach immortality; against which, and not perhaps 
 against immortality itself the Sadducees protested. The word " Epicu- 
 reans'' for atheists point back to the time before the Maccabees, to the 
 dissensions between Hassidim and Grecians when Epicureans existed in 
 Israel. The other part of the passage also points to that time, when revela- 
 tion was denied and immortality was believed on the authority of Socrates, 
 Plato and other philosopher?, but not on the authority of revelation. This 
 is partly corroborated by a well-known passage in Aboth of Rabbi Nathan, 
 which brings up the schism of the Sadducees among the doctors up to the 
 school of Antigonos, hence to the first half 'of the third ante-Christian cen- 
 tury, after it may have been an old question among all other classes of 
 people. 
 
 Jesus knew this doctrine and adhered to it. When the Sadducees asked 
 him that known question about the future world, he answered them in go d 
 Pharisean language, that in the future world men will have nq physical 
 bodies, no corporeal passions, no bodily wants. " The righteous will sit
 
 - 76- 
 
 with their crowns upon their heads and enjoy the splendor of the She- 
 kinah," the Pharisees add. But after Jesus had fully answered the ques- 
 tion of the Sadducees, he continues to prove this doctrine horailetically 
 from a passage in the Thorah (Matthew xxii. 31, 32), exactly as Rabbi 
 Gamliel did. Why this second and superfluous explanation? He wanted 
 to prove that immortality or resurrection is taught in the Thorah, by Moses 
 we might say, as all orthdox Israelites then believed. 
 
 Where and how is it taught in the Thorah f That Mishnah passage an- 
 swers the question in full. Why does one deny resurrection or immortality 
 in the Thorah? Because he denies divine revelation. Why does he deny 
 this? Because he denies God. The three ideas are logically connected and 
 arranged in that Mishnah. Invert the order and you must say, he who be- 
 lieves in God and in divine revelation, must necessarily also believe in the 
 personal immortality of man as being announced in that very Thorah. The 
 fact that the eternal God revealed His will to man, is the guarantee and 
 proof of his immortality. Imperishable wisdom can not be addressed to 
 perishable nature, as little as man can teach moral philosophy or theology 
 to the dumb animal, although it may understand articulate sounds. The 
 spirit only can understand the spirit, and the spirit can not perish, since it 
 is of God, and not of matter; it is simple and not organic, hence not sub- 
 ject to dissolution. The Sinaic revelation is the Thorah in which immor- 
 tality or resurrection is taught by divine authority to all Israel, which was 
 to demonstrate that all are immortal beings, and not the select ones, as was 
 the belief in Egypt, India. Athens and Rome; all are God's children, born 
 and destined for immortality. Therefore, after the Sinaic revelation the 
 people exclaimed, " This day we have seen that God speaketh to man, and 
 he liveth " (Deut. v. 11), he is immortal, for he can understand God's 
 speech. The announcement and the evidence of immortality is in the Si- 
 naic revelation. No more announcement was necessary, and no better evi- 
 dence could be given. Therefore, certainly Moses and Israel knew and be- 
 lieved this doctrine, as all must forever do who believe in revelation. This 
 is in brief what I have to say on the subject of " Immortality and Sinai." 
 The argument based thereon will be the subject of my next lecture. The 
 revelation is, in the first place, the most convincing proof of the dominion 
 of the spirit and its sovereignty over matter and its modifications. It is 
 in the second place the evidence for the similarity in kind of the divine and 
 the human spirit. It is in the third place the demonstration of the per- 
 petual. relation of the individual to the universal spirit, as the body stands 
 in relation to matter. Therefore, it is per se the most expressive lesson of 
 personal immortality and its best evidence.
 
 XII. 
 
 A RESUME OF THE BODY OF DOCTRINE. 
 
 The Body of Doctrine is a technical expression to denote an aggregate 
 of doctrines or fundamental theories logically connected, which form the 
 basis of any system of religion or ethics. I have attempted in the previous 
 lectures of this series to analyze the doctrines contained in the Sinaic reve- 
 lation. This Body of Doctrine is fundamental to the three religions of Ju- 
 daism, Christianity and the Islam. However widely doctors may disagree 
 in definitions and subordinate points, they must agree in the main, viz : 
 that this is the substance of what is called positive or revealed religion; 
 hence we have set forth the "Agreements," and merely pointed out some 
 " Disagreements " in regard to definitions and subordinate points. 
 
 We agree that this is not a world of dead matter, with mechanical forces, 
 irrational, insensible, cold and dead, thoughtlessly and aimlessly engaged 
 in perpetual production and destruction. Neither Monism nor Atomism, 
 neither Evolution, in as far as it is a mere conglomeration of mechanical 
 principles and hypotheses without foundation in fact, nor Positivism, with 
 its agnostic basis and its method of selecting facts of experience or experi- 
 ment as the only knowable truth, can satisfy us who believe in the exist- 
 tence of consciousness and reason, freedom and love, the intelligence of the 
 human family, and the spirit which must be the substance of which all these 
 functions are accidents or qualities. Like the Preacher of old we feel ne- 
 cessitated to exclaim over all those systems which, like the wind, come and 
 go, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and windy thought." We can not 
 adopt them as fabrics of thought, because they negate consciousness, free- 
 dom and reason ; nor can we believe in them as a matter of faith, since 
 they are hostile to the moral and emotional nature of man. Therefore, 
 whether Jew or Gentile, believer or skeptic, we must seek refuge in the un- 
 derlying fact of the world's theology, to protect ourselves and others against 
 pessimism, misanthropism, despair and suicide, which are the natural and 
 actual offspring of sophistry, fallacy and falsity. Daily experience con- 
 firms this dolorous fact. " The wicked flee when none pursueth and the 
 righteous rest secure like the Lion." (Proverbs xxviii.) The world's civili- 
 zation and the happiness of the individual enjoyed therein were not 
 erected upon the systems of the godless; they have never achieved any great
 
 78 
 
 triumphs in the cause of humanity. Society and its institutions rest upon 
 the fundamental idea of the spirit, the One and Eternal God. At this ad- 
 vanced age of the human family we can not begin history anew, nor dare 
 we risk happiness and progress upon individual speculations. We can not 
 say to all history, thou art wrong, nor is it either just or sensible to ad- 
 vise our neighbor, who dwells in security in his own house, to leave it and 
 roam over boundless wastes without approved guide or compass. Therefore 
 we must come to the same conclusion as did the Preacher of old, "At the 
 end of the thing all is to be heard : Fear God and keep His commandments, 
 for this is the whole man." the whole guide and compass of man. 
 
 This belief in the One and Eternal God led us into the truism of the per- 
 petual connection of individual and universal spirit, the connection of man 
 with God ; as in physical nature also the individual being stands in perpetual 
 connection and reciprocity with the cosmos. Therefore revelation as a psy- 
 chological fact is as natural as the process of digestion and assimilation as a 
 physical fact. The one is even as necessary as the other to him who believes 
 in the unity or oneness of God, as demonstrated by the unison of nature. 
 The most momentous of all supposed direct manifestations of the uni- 
 versal to the individual spirit appeared to us in the Sinaic revelation, be- 
 cause it contains in substance all the doctrine and law necessary for man 
 and mankind to secure to themselves salvation, peace and happiness here 
 and hereafter, the life of righteousness in time and its just reward in eter- 
 nity. Although as reasoners we must reject the evidence of miracles, we 
 can not risk the happiness of man to a frail craft made of supernatural or 
 even unnatural allegations, and our Maker has granted us freedom of 
 thought; yet we can not deny the Sinaic revelation, on account of the his- 
 torical evidence in its support ; the evidence of an entire nation and its un- 
 interrupted traditions, the evidence of all Israel from the very day when he 
 stood before Jehovah at Horeb to this last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury ; the evidence of all Christian and Mohammedan believers of all cen- 
 turies, generations, climes and zone?, whose very fabrics of religion, law 
 and government, aye, the fabric of civilized society, are based on this very 
 belief in the Sinaic revelation as a direct manifestation of Diety to man. In 
 the face of this historical evidence it matters not whether we are able to un- 
 derstand the fact or whether it is beyond the horizon of our cogitation, we 
 are bound to beiieve that which is historically authenticated and we have 
 no means to contradict. 
 
 Next we analyzed the substance of the Sinaic revelation and found in it 
 the elements of human knowledge to direct and guide him safely, the in- 
 dividual and the community, to human perfection and happiness. The 
 jurist acknowledges in this revealed substance the foundation of right, the 
 divine authority of justice, and the categories of law, to which nothing can
 
 79 
 
 be added and from which nothing can be taken away. So we find in it the 
 highest and surest standard of rectitude to lead the nations to justice, peace, 
 freedom, equality, prosperity and happiness ; to guide the individual to 
 righteousness and holiness, satisfaction and happiness, the formation of 
 firm and solid character in consonance with the will of God and the happi- 
 ness of man, and the preparation for eternal life and felicity. We find in 
 the Sinaic revelation the highest species of evidence affirming and estab- 
 lishing in the mind of man the existence and love of the Eternal God, the 
 godlike nature and immortality of man, the reality of the moral law, the 
 dominion of God's universal and special providence, the freedom of man 
 and his accountability to God and the Law, the mercy of our Heavenly 
 Father for the repentant sinner, the perfectability of human nature and the 
 solidarity of the human family with one God, one justice, one freedom and 
 one love for all. This is the Body of Doctrine with its sufficient reason con- 
 tained in the Sinaic revelation. These are the elements of human knowl- 
 edge, together with the adequate motives to elevate man and mankind to 
 that high position of satisfaction and happiness which is the idea 1 of all 
 philanthropists. 
 
 So far we have remained within the bounds of our " Agreements." No fair 
 reasoner will deny an iota thereof. Those who feel the woes of humanity and 
 sympathize with the afflicted and oppressed must accept this Body of Doc- 
 trine as the elements of salvation. Those who speak of the religion of the 
 future man can not help confessing that whatever is established in the na- 
 ture and reason of man will remain with the race forever ; therefore, in as far 
 as this Body of Doctrine is established in the nature and reason of man, 
 it will be the religion of all generations, as we have no cause to doubt the 
 final and universal triumph of truth over all superstition and sophistry, 
 and no cause to think that there could exist a religion without God 
 and revelation, and the doctrines which are the logical sequents thereof. 
 In as far then as Judaism is the religion revealed on Sinai, it is the uni- 
 versal religion, and must become the religion of the future man. Truth 
 once enunciated remains truth forever. It is not changed or improved by 
 any progress in science or art, any number of inventions or discoveries. 
 The truth established on Mount Sinai remains truth forever. 
 
 But there are also " Disagreements," and there the tribal religion, the 
 sectional religion, the exclusive religion, the intolerance and fanaticism be- 
 gin. Some people, both Jews and Gentiles, believe too much, and are 
 eager and zealous that others also should believe like them ; there the strife 
 begins. We all believe in one God. We are monotheists. All worship 
 God as the loving father of man. The more intense and correct this belief 
 the more tolerant and charitable man ought to be toward his fellow-man, 
 also the erring and wicked, who, after all, is the child of the same Father
 
 80 
 
 of all. The " Agreements " produce harmony. But there comes to it the 
 element of " Disagreement," and produces intolerance and fanaticism. 
 Wherever the Jew maintained that God was only the God of Israel and the 
 patron of Palestine, or imagined Him in the anthropomorphous form, a 
 mighty king sitting upon a lofty throne in His heavenly palace, surrounded 
 by a host of ministering angels, engaged exclusively with the affairs of His 
 chosen people, he became a fantastic fanatic, and his religion tribal, narrow 
 and intolerant. He must go to Palestine to find his God, and must 
 have his own country and government, for this world is not God's world 
 with him. Confused and defective reasoners still fancy a Jewish nation- 
 ality and government, the restoration of the throne of David under a Messiah 
 king, of which there is no idea in the Sinaic revelation or the laws of Mo- 
 ses. They despair of human reason and the progress of humanity, the 
 solidarity of mankind and the advancement toward that objective point of 
 all prophecy, because their conceptions of God and His government are in 
 adequate obscured and confused ; because they disagree with Israel, whose 
 God is the Creator. Preserver and Governor of the universe and the merci- 
 ful Father of mankind. They disagree with Israel, and there begins their 
 "Disagreement'' with the world and its affairs. 
 
 When the Mohammedan limits the infinite Deity to his own mosques and 
 confines God's eternal love and mercy to his few co-religionists whose faces 
 are turned in prayer toward Mecca; when he condemns to eternal misery 
 all infidels,*, e., all non-Mohammedan human beings, and imposes upon the 
 God of freedom the Oriental Heathen fatalism, he establishes his " Dis- 
 agreement" with the rest of mankind, misconceives the Eternal God, ex 
 eludes himself from the family of man, disregards the affairs of this world 
 makes himself a subservient slave, and becomes a fanatic whose sole objec- 
 of existence is to enter the Mohammedan paradise, although his practice 
 widely differs from his theories, as is often the case, also among other 
 people. His fundamental error is in his misconception of the Eternal 
 Deity. 
 
 And now comes the orthodox Christian sectarian and tells you that all 
 your doctrines may be true and good, but they are worthless unless you be- 
 lieve also in the dogmas of Christology, the first point of which is the belief 
 in a triune God. If you urge the right of reason to reject whatever is hostile 
 to its dicta, contrary to first principles ; he will answer you with the credo, 
 you must believe it just because you can not comprehend, not understand, 
 not think it, because it is a contradiction in. its very terms, it is a mystery, 
 a matter of faith, and faith signifies to believe contrary to reason. You 
 must renounce and sacrifice reason to receive the reward of faith, for with- 
 out this special reward you are damned and lost. It is this very precept 
 which always made and makes now so many schismatics, infidels and
 
 - SI 
 
 atheists. They take the God of dogmatic theology as the God in fact and 
 reality, and find it easy to dethrone and deny it. 
 
 If you furthermore urge, that if an inexplicable mystery it be, it could 
 be made true and sure only by a divine revelation ; for what man can not 
 understand he could not possibly advance as a fact, unless he obtained his 
 knowledge thereof by undv>ubted sensual impressions or by eye-witnesses 
 whose veracity and capacity he could not doubt. Neither of which can be 
 the case in the human knowledge of God's nature and essentiality. In 
 revelation, however, throughout the old Bible and its Apocrypha there is no 
 idea of a trinity ; and according to some of the best expounders of the New 
 Testament it is not there. It was not even an established belief of the 
 Church prior to the Council of Nice, and right there and after it the pro- 
 tests of prelates were loud and emphatic against it. Hence it was certainly 
 not a revelation, which in so important a point must have been at least as 
 clear and intelligible as was the first revelation : '' I, Jehovah, am thy 
 God," which it was to contradict or supplement. If it is no revelation, how 
 could I know and believe it? Especially, if I know that trinitarianism is 
 taken from the Pagan shrine, why must I believe in it? 
 
 To all this, however, your trinitarian friend will reply somewhat to this 
 effect : I accept the canonical books of the New Testament as a new reve- 
 lation, and have no doubt in the perfect truth of its statements. There 
 are, however, passages in that New Testament, especially in the Gospel, ac- 
 cording to John, and also in the Epistles of Paul, Jesus speaking of him- 
 self or being spoken of by John or Paul in a manner which I can under- 
 stand only to the effect that he was an incarnation of the Deity himself. So 
 do I find in the same book passages which refer to the Holy Ghost as a sep- 
 arate being or another manifestation of the same Godhead. Unable to un- 
 derstand those passages otherwise, I must either believe in three Gods or 
 one God who consists of three persons. Being a Monotheist, as according 
 to the Synoptics Jesus certainly was, and according to the other Epistles 
 his Apostles also were, I am obliged to be a trinitarian and believe in one 
 God in three persons. 
 
 This argument, you see, is fair enough, but it rests upon the point that 
 because there are certain passages in the New Testament which might be 
 explained by the trinitarian hypothesis, therefore the Supreme Being must 
 be in fact a triune God. Others, and Christians, too, explain those pas- 
 sages differently, hence there is no certainty in them. Others, again, ad- 
 vance that a hypothesis contrary to first principles, is illegitimate, whatever 
 it might explain. So, for instance, one might advance the hypothesis that 
 the authors of the New Testament writings were guided by Philo's specula- 
 tions and Pagan beliefs, and glorified their master with poetical tropes 
 
 11
 
 82 
 
 taken from those sources. Hypothesis against hypothesis is good argu- 
 ment, especially if the latter is not contrary to first principles, and the 
 former is. But the argument is faulty in itself. The hypothesis could 
 only establish the possibility of understanding those passages in that man- 
 ner; it can never establish the fact that God is, or is not, a triune being. 
 Confess at once that there are certain passages in the New Testament, as 
 there are quite a number in Revelations of John, Daniel and elsewhere, 
 which you do not understand, and perhaps -nobody else ever will be able 
 to understand them, the historical key to unravel the mysteries having been 
 lost; and be guided by first principles in harmony and unison with human 
 reason. 
 
 So you might go on arguing for days, perhaps for weeks, and neither 
 the trinitarian nor the Unitarian would be exhausted, and at the end, most 
 likely, each would believe as he did before; because they agree in prin- 
 ciple, viz : in their belief in one God, and disagree only in the understanding 
 of certain passages in this or that holy book, which perhaps both of them 
 misunderstand. 
 
 The rabbis of old maintained that a belief in dualism or trinitarianism, 
 especially if inherited of the fathers, is not to be considered Paganism, and 
 so does Joseph Albo treat the question in his book " On Principles"; be- 
 cause the Dualist or Trinitarian does not deny the one God ; he merely as- 
 sumes another definition of the term. Definition is the office of reason, 
 and reason is free before God and man. The eame is the case with the 
 Mohammedan and the Jewish Kabbalist and Anthropomorphist, as Moses 
 Maimonides often expressed it. The Living God of Israel, the Almighty, 
 Preserver and Governor of the Universe, is the principle which guides and 
 pervades Jews, Christians and Mohammedans. The " Disagreements" are 
 in the definitions, as is the case also in conscience. Those who attach to 
 their definitions the value of essentiality and the importance of principle, 
 become intolerant fanatics who have so often disturbed the peace of the hu- 
 man family, and tear it apart in hostile factions and exclusive clans. Ra- 
 tional men, fair reasoners, are humble and tolerant, and understand well 
 that we possess only two authorities to decide those questions, the one of 
 which is reason, which can not go beyond first principles, and will never at- 
 tach undue importance to its own definitions ; and the second is the Sinaic 
 revelation, which teaches us that God is, and what He desires man to do 
 and what to be. It is not in man's power to know what God is, hence we 
 know only the announcement : " I, Jehovah, am thy God " ; if he was a 
 triune God, we could not possibly know it ; it is not in reason, it is not in 
 revelation ; it is not necessary to know it. If it were, I think and believe
 
 83 
 
 God would have told us somewhere and somehow, I, Jehovah, am a triune 
 God. 
 
 You see, all we can do and ought to do is, that we agree to disagree in 
 such issues, while we agree in principle. This great republic was built up, 
 and is governed on this very principle, and the experiment has proved a 
 success. Let us learn and apply the lesson of experience. Let us humbly 
 and patiently wait till mankind shall be advanced far enough to decide its 
 " Disagreements." The time will come as sure as the day succeeds the 
 night. Until it comes let us live together in peace and good will.
 
 XIII. 
 
 PARADISE, HELL, SATAN, EVIL SPIRITS OR RECOMPENSE. 
 
 Eschatology, as the theologians call the doctrine of the last and final 
 things, the judgment after death, the resurrection of the 'dead and the hist 
 judgment day, including the various modes of punishment or reward in 
 another region of the universe or on this earth radically changed for the 
 resurrected man ; eschatology engaged the minds of the theologians and 
 philosophers of all ages, among Pagans as well as among Israelites, Chris-* 
 tians and Mohammedans. This, according to its nature, being a matter of 
 faith and speculation exclusively, without any basis of cogitable facts, 
 imagination found in it a wide scope to build up conditions and states of 
 happiness or misery, of entity or nonentity, which were grasped by faith 
 and rendered acceptable by speculation. 
 
 Imagination is lawless reason. It is a free function of the mind. None 
 can foretell its productions, as it is subject to no law. The countless va- 
 rieties of dreams, of melodies in music, of stories, sceneries and figures of 
 speech in poetry, and the variegated productions of fancy in all other fields 
 bear testimony to its perfectly lawless freedom. Therefore, in eschatology, 
 which offered so boundless a field to fancy, the views and doctrines, the 
 hopes and fears, the promises and menaces are of infinite variety among 
 theologians and philosophers. 
 
 One point, however, is strange in this connection, and it is this : If you 
 run over the Talmud and Midrash of the Hebrews, you will be astonished 
 to find in them precisely the same views, doctrines, phantasma and phan- 
 toms as in the New Testament and its Apocrypha, in the Fathers of the 
 Church and the Koran and its expounders. Consequently the speculations 
 of the reflective minds on those topics are about the same among the dif- 
 ferent writers who adhered to any of the three creeds. Also the recent 
 speculations of Protestant theologians about the nails, hair and intestines 
 of the resurrected men have their counterpart in the Talmud, in the ques- 
 tion earnestly discussed there, whether the righteous will rise with or with- 
 out their garments, with or without the bodily blemishes, diseases and de- 
 formities of their mundane life. All the materialistic conceptions of the 
 future state and judgment up to the purely idealistic Visio Dei essentialis, 
 " to enjoy the luster of the Shekinah," as the Jews expressed it, as you find
 
 85 
 
 them in Christian theology, the Heavenly Jerusalem included, you meet 
 them in the Talmud. The Jews, therefore, found, as regards this matter, as 
 much satisfaction in their Talmud as did the Christians in their New Testa 
 ment and dogmatic theology and the Mohammedans in their Koran, with 
 the exception of the female attendants on the saints in Paradise. 
 
 It would be very interesting to compile the eschatological statements of the 
 Talmud, and place them in juxtaposition to those of the New Testament, 
 the Koran and their various expounders. It would prove, I think, that all 
 of them, including the resurrection and ascension of the Christian Savior 
 and his descent to Hades, were borrowed from the Jews ; productions of 
 fancy by different men in different climes and ages can not be as identical 
 as those allegations are ; and the rabbis of old, distant as they were from 
 Rome as far as Persia up to India, could hardly be supposed to have bor- 
 rowed of Christian theologians, although they did, adopt Pagan myths and 
 Judaized them. The miracles also, the apparitions and ghost stories are 
 of the same kind and intent in all those sources, and the reasoning of 
 later theologians runs over precisely the same ground among Jews, Chris- 
 tians and Mohammedans. But our time and space would not permit us to 
 undertake that interesting work. We can only say here that the Jews be- 
 lieved, like Christians and Mohammedans, in future existence, reward and 
 punishment on exactly the same ground of alleged facts, long before the 
 philosophers took up the dogma, reasoned on the subject, and rendered it 
 acceptable to the reasoning mind, long before Pythagoras and Socrates, 
 long before Zoroaster and Confucius, too, because the consciousness of im- 
 mortality, like the knowledge of the existence of God, is man's heritage 
 from Heaven. All the legends and myths which were invented to represent 
 this belief in an acceptable garb amount to no more than a proof that the 
 consciousness of immortality was in man long before he philosophized. It 
 is not the product of discursive reasoning; it is man's own birthright; it 
 is part and parcel of his nature. 
 
 Some of these legends and myths refer to his Satanic majesty, the prince 
 of darkness, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, the vulgar Devil, with his host of 
 little devils, evil demons, unclean spirits, whose chief abode is in some un- 
 known place, called Gehenna, Gehinnom, Hades, purgatory, hell, Abaddon, 
 and five other names, according to the Talmud. That bad place, of course, 
 is dark, dismal and cold, although a perpetual fire of brimstone burns 
 there, in which the wicked souls are burnt, purified .or forever tormented. 
 It must be a cold and dark fire, and yet it burns .and torments the poor 
 souls in that cold and dark place. Imagination in various ages and locali- 
 ties depicted those Dramatis Personse, and peopled that dreadful palace with 
 phantoms in correspondence to the tastes, grossness of criTnes, the igno-
 
 86 
 
 ranee and stupidity of the vulgar masses, to which priests and schoolmen 
 added their shares, as the nurse shaped her tales and the school-master 
 bound his rod according to the rudeness and wickedness of the parents 
 whose children were intrusted to their care. 
 
 It is unnecessary, perhaps, to say now, at this high noon of enlightenment, 
 that those stories, legends and myths are products of fancy without any foun- 
 dation in fact; and deserve no more credence than the stories of the same 
 kind in ancient mythology or' in the demonology of China. Everybody 
 almost knows now that which a rabbi in the third Christian century said, 
 " All the prophets prophesied concerning the days of the Messiah," which 
 signifies the future of the human family on earth ; " but concerning the 
 coming world (the state of existence hereafter) 'No eye hath seen it besides 
 thee (God) ; He hath made it to hope (or wait) for him.' ' : No human in- 
 telligence can understand a state of existence purely spiritual, hence none 
 could approximately define the nature of spiritual reward or punishment, 
 or of a place where the souls of the departed abide. It is all speculation 
 based on speculation, and imagination taking its material from this mun- 
 dane life, with its fears and sufferings. It is evident, therefore, that all 
 which has been written on Satan, evil spirits, Gehenna or Paradise, pur- 
 gatory or hell, fire and brimstone, is poetry, plain and simple, without any 
 solid fact to rely upon or any principle of reason to defend it. These things 
 belong to the museum of antiquities, to the arsenal of history as charac- 
 teristics, of the ages and places, where those respective legends and myths 
 were invented. All we have a right in this connection to ask is, that the 
 Jew and the unbeliever do not laugh over the Satan and ghost stories and the 
 practice of exorcism reported in the Gospels and Acts, although if those 
 stories were not in those books they would prove more acceptable 10 in- 
 telligent readers now; nor should they deride the quibbling of scho- 
 liasts in the theo- philosophical treatises on the Christian dogmas, and the 
 thunderbolts of excommunication which they hurled at one another when 
 they happened to disagree on the details of this matter, although it is exceed- 
 ingly ridiculous to read it in any history of dogmatics ; because the Chris- 
 tian would say to the Jew, You have precisely the same stories in your Tal- 
 mud, and the same quibbling on these points in your post-Talmudical scho- 
 liasts and Kabbalists, who describe heaven and hell, Gan Eden and Gehin- 
 nom, with all that is done, enjoyed and suffered there, with the accuracy and 
 precision with which the schoolboy's text-book describes the surface of the 
 earth. And to the unbeliever the Christian might well say, You do not 
 believe in one devil, but you believe in many. You who make hocus-pocus 
 with the spirits and believe in rapping and tapping, in vulgar soothsaying 
 and witchcraft, in dark arts performed in the dark, you must riot laugh over
 
 87 
 
 the ghost stories of other people. Again the Jew has the right to say to 
 the Christian, You have no right to laugh over the absurdities and ghost 
 stories of the Talmud and its expounders of the past, when you believe in a 
 personal Satan who tempted and tried the Son of God, absurdity can 
 hardly go beyond this ; when you believe the ghost stories and exorcisms of 
 the New Testament, which are certainly glaring enough to defy reason and 
 override all intelligence. The greatest miracles of the Talmud are mere 
 child's play in comparison to the immaculate conception, the resurrection 
 of the crucified one from death and his post-mortem feats on earth, in 
 Hades and then in Heaven. So Jew, Christian and Mohammedan might 
 well say to one another, Laugh not at me, look at your own. 
 
 We, however, who have no reason to believe absurdities, because they are 
 written in the Talmud or any other book ; who adhere to the first prin- 
 ciples of reason and the Sinaic revelation, and rely in nowise or manner 
 upon the evidence of miracles ; who reject whatever is unnatural in thought, 
 fancy or deed, and adhere steadfastly to the dicta of reason and the Sinaic 
 standard of rectitude, its command of righteousness and holiness, and its 
 demonstration of providence, freedom and immortality, I mean those who 
 are true and upright in these matters, we do not laugh, we do not ridicule, 
 we do not scorn, we understand and appreciate that wonderful things have 
 been written for bearded children, for ignorant multitudes, for masses un- 
 able to reason for themselves, and have been written with the best inten- 
 tions to improve and elevate the human mind, to impress neglected human- 
 ity with the sublime truths of God, providence, justice, holiness and immor- 
 tality, in ages and localities unfit and unable to think in the abstract form, 
 although they were certainly not written for men of advanced intelligence. 
 We can not laugh at those things, we can only see in them the moral and in- 
 tellectual altitude of certain people for whom those things were written, and 
 attempt to ascertain the intentions of those writers, who are certainly 
 teachers of righteousness and intended the education of mankind. We have 
 a right to say, why do you make so much noise over your salvation if there 
 is no devil and no hell to be saved from? Why do you speak and write so 
 much of that unknown world if you know no more and no better than we 
 do? What means that terror of damnation if you can not form the re- 
 motest idea of either damnation or salvation? But if you imagine or be- 
 lieve that you know all that which reason and the Sinaic revelation do not 
 teach, you are welcome to it, if it gives you satisfaction and pleasure ; but 
 grant us the privilege at least to imagine and believe that we know those 
 things better, or at least equally as well as you do. We do not laugh at 
 you and you shall not sneer at as. We do not call you superstitious, and 
 you shall not call us stiff-necked and hard-hearted. We do not avoid
 
 88 
 
 you, and you shall not pursue us. We do not advise God to exclude any 
 human being from His love and grace, and you shall not arm your God with 
 thunderbolts to cru.-h and condemn us. " I am (for) peace, and when they 
 speak (it is) for war." This verse might also be rendered thus, " I am 
 for peace; although they may be all for war, whenever they speak." 
 
 There can be no doubt that neither in reason nor the Sinaic revela- 
 tion there could be an idea of a hell, a devil, evil spirits or unclean 
 spirits. There is no mention in that revelation of any future reward or 
 punishment in any form, simply because whatever man can not understand 
 can not be revealed to him in words ; and man can not and does not under- 
 stand a state of purely spiritual existence. Therefore wherever men have 
 spoken of that existence they were obliged to express their thoughts and 
 sentiments in concrete and anthropomorphous terms, which may have been 
 correctly understood at the time, but must necessarily sound absurd to 
 posterity, who know not the spiritual idea connected then and there with 
 the concrete and anthropomorphous expression; and the Sinaic revelation 
 was originally intended to be universally and correctly understood. Lan- 
 guage has no word now for immortality and must resort to the negative 
 expression of not mortal; nor has it a term to express the purely spiritual 
 state of existence. The Jews coined the expression Hisharath han-Nephesh, 
 " Preservation of the soul" for immortality, but they found no term by 
 which to denote the state of future existence, because it is as incompre- 
 hensible as the quodity of God. We know that God is, and know in part 
 from nature, history and revelation what He does and what he desires man 
 to do ; but we know not what and how He is. So we can only know that the 
 soul is an immortal spirit as revelation teaches and reason affirms ; but we 
 can not know what and how the soul is in the body or outside thereof, in 
 time or in eternity. It is self-evident, therefore, that we can not under- 
 stand the nature of the reward or punishment to be administered to the 
 disembodied soul ; hence all presentations of a hell, hell-fire, torments, 
 brimstone, large devil and small devils, from the standpoint of reason and 
 the Sinaic revelation, are radically false and purely fictitious. Wherever 
 the term Satan occurs in Scriptures, it must be taken as a fiction, a per- 
 sonification of " hindrance" to do certain things. 
 
 The idea of pome kind of a reward and punishment after death, the pre- 
 cise nature of which is unknown, is frequently expressed figuratively in the 
 Bible. The sacred writers speak frequently of Sheol; and Sheol does not 
 signify HELL, for Jacob said of himself, " I will go down mourning to my 
 son (Joseph) to Sheol" (Genesis xxxv. 37.) The term singnifies " nether- 
 world," an abode for the souls of the departed, very deep below (Job xi. 
 8), where all are alike (Ibid. iii. 12 e. s.), all must go there (Isaiah xiv.),
 
 89 
 
 the King and his servants, the great and the small, old or young, rich or 
 poor, all go to Sheol. No hell-fire, no particular suffering, no diabolic tor- 
 ments are mentioned or even hinted at in connection with the soul's abode 
 in Sheol. It rather appears that all become there Rephaim, slumbering and 
 dreaming shades, conscious of their own deeds and unconscious of the outer 
 world, living purely subjective and without connection with any existing 
 object, a sort of dream life, in which a person's consciousness of his wick- 
 edness and misdeeds is his punishment, as on the other hand the con- 
 sciousness of goodness and holiness is his reward. It appears to, have 
 been the idea that the soul deprived of its bodily organism could only have 
 subjective existence and recognize only itself and its own doings and omis- 
 sions without the ability to recognize objects of any kind, which is done by 
 bodily organs. 
 
 Not all souls, however, remain forever in that condition. The pious rise 
 from that lower to the higher region, or to a state of higher life, or even to 
 that highest state which is called Visio Dei essentialis, " to enjoy the luster 
 of the Shekinah." This hope and belief is frequently expressed by David, 
 Job and other Bible worthies. " Jehovah bringeth up from Sheol my soul, 
 enliveneth me from among those that go down in the pit ; sing to Jehovah, 
 all His pious ones, and give thanks to the memorial of His holiness" (Psalms 
 xxx.), saith David, and the sons of Karah repeat the same idea thus : " Elo- 
 him only will (or can) redeem my soul from Sheol, when he will take me. 
 Selah." (Ibid. xlix. 16.) David said, "Thou abandonest not my soul to 
 Sheol, thou sufferest not thy pious ones to see corruption; thou wilt make 
 known unto me the path of life, the fulness of joys (which are) with thy 
 countenance, the pleasantness (which is) at thy right hand forever" (Psalm 
 xvi.), which is the Biblical foundation for the Visio Dei essentialis ; and Job 
 in his suffering exclaims that he would cheerfully bear up under the op- 
 pressive burden of visitation and wait hopefully in Sheol until the time of 
 his change would come ; if he was sure that God would find him worthy of 
 that higher state of life after death! (Job xiv. 13-14.) For another sacred 
 bard had said, probably before Job, " Not the dead will praise God, and not 
 all of those who go down to silence (to Sheol) ; but we (the " blessed ones 
 of Jevovah " verse 15) will praise the Lord from now and forever. Halle- 
 lujah." (Psalms cxv. 15-18.) The Prophet Isaiah expressed the hope, 
 Ve'eretz Rephaim thappil, u The land of the shades (Sheol) thou wilt cause 
 to fall " ; to which he added, Billa ham-Maveth lan-Netzach, " Death will be 
 swallowed in eternity, and Jehovah will wipe the tear from every counte- 
 nance." (Isaiah xxv. 8.) He evidently believed that there is also in Sheol 
 a progress from lower to higher conditions for all human beings ; or that 
 
 12
 
 90 
 * 
 
 the progress of man on earth to higher and clearer self-consciousness by the 
 universal triumphs of enlightenment and holiness will deprive Sheol of its 
 inhabitants, in consequence of the solidarity of the human family. This is 
 the Biblical foundation of eschatology without devil, hell, brimstone or any 
 particular instruments of torture and any offense to human reason. 
 
 We have to add to this the conservation, constancy and universality of 
 force, viz : that the same forces remain and are equally efficient at all times 
 and in all parts of the universe. Call the sentient and intelligent soul a 
 force, and you do at once understand its immortality. The Sinaic revela- 
 tion is the proof for the immortal and God-like nature of man ; and the 
 principle of justice, which includes the ideas of reward and punishment. 
 The law of God-like force is to outlast time and be the same in eternity ; 
 hence there must be reward and punishment also hereafter. In as far, how- 
 ever, as moral wrongs are subjective only, and its consequences are limited 
 in time, so must the punishment be subjective and limited in time. In 
 as far as the good and true is eternal, so must be its reward. The righteous 
 and self-conscious souls arise to that glory which we can not understand in 
 this state of existence ; the wicked and brutal men who never rose to a 
 state of pure self-consciousness in this life, punish themselves in Sheol, 
 until God in his mercy shall call them from subjective stupor to objective 
 cogitation, which we again understand not. This is. Bible eechatology 
 without any interference with God or human reason, and without any means 
 of salvation besides righteousness, holiness rationality freedom and progress.
 
 GIFTS OF GRACE, REDEMPTION AND SALVATION. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 An ancient prophet said (Micah vi. 6): " Wherewith shall I approach 
 Jehovah, bow myself before the High Elohimf Shall I approach Him with 
 burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Can Jehovah be pleased with 
 thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my 
 first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
 He hath told thee,'0 ! man, what is good, and what Jehovah, thy Elohim, re- 
 quireth of thee; it is but to do justice, to love goodness, and to walk un- 
 ostentatiously with thy Elohim." This simple passage contains the old, 
 old questions of the religious mind, viz, wherewith shall the mortal being 
 appear before the Majesty on High, the Lord of the universe, or which are 
 the proper means of worship? Are the fat rams of Bashan or the streams 
 of oil acceptable to Him? And the next question is, how shall the poor 
 sinner atone for his transgressions before Him who is most pure and most 
 holy? Shall I give the best and dearest I have as a ransom for my guilty 
 soul ; which are the means of redemption, redemption from the yoke of sin 
 and guilt? How shall I purify and elevate my soul to save it from the pangs 
 of guilt and the domain of death, to rest in peace in Sheol, and be entitled to 
 the hope that the Almighty will call me from the dream-Jife of Sheol to the 
 fulness of joy which is in His presence, the pleasantness and bliss which are 
 at His right hand forever? Which are the means of salvation? They 
 must be in man and not outside of him, as the capacities of sin and self- 
 destruction are also in him. They must be in human will and reason as 
 the ability to soar aloft is in the bird. So, it appears, that prophet thought 
 who, in answering those momentous questions, points out means within 
 the power of the human will and the counsel of the individual reason; be 
 right, be good, be true and be saved, so, ! man, thou hast been told, the 
 prophet advises. Be redeemed by righteousness, be saved by the love of 
 the good and the true ; by opening widely the portals of reason for the 
 King of Glory to come in ; by expanding the soul and unfolding its capac- 
 ities, to rise above the chains of matter, the prison of the demi-conscious 
 dream-life and the self-delusion of passion's powerless slave ; to rise to the 
 throne of glory. This is resurrection in fact, rising in this life from Sheol 
 to the throne of glory, " the nearness of God "; and for all we know, it is 
 also in life hereafter the rising of the soul from Sheol to the " nearness of
 
 - 92 
 
 God," by the inherent abilities to rise from dim consciousness and self- 
 deceit to the sunny height of glory and joy, in a state of clear and full self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 This appears to be the idea of that prophet and of all prophets who re- 
 ceived their inspiration from Mount Sinai. But it appears to be too simple 
 to be true and too natural to be satisfactory in the estimation of dogmatic 
 theologians. u For God hath made man right, and they seek many reckon- 
 ings." Ever since man has reached the consciousness of his superiority to 
 the brute, he has asked the same identical questions in the most different 
 forms : Which are the proper means of worship, of atonement, of redemp- 
 tion, of salvation? And the answers are almost as numerous as the stars 
 and, in the majority of cases, as absurd and illogical as the madman's 
 dance. It is hard to say what folly and cruelty man has not committed un- 
 der the impression that he would thus please and appease the gods and save 
 his soul from perdition. From the human victims sacrificed to Pagan gods 
 to the autos-da-fe of civilized barbarians ; from the self-destruction of the 
 infatuated Hindoo seeking atonement for his sins to the Flagelants, hermits, 
 ascetics, monks and nuns for the greater glory of God, reaching down to 
 our very doors ; from the dancing, fighting, wounding priests of Baal on 
 Mount Carmel, and the women weeping and lamenting over the descent of 
 Thammuz or Adonis to the nether world down to the shouting, dancing, 
 shaking and screaming fraternities of our days ; from the unchaste women 
 in the Heathen temples and the crazed ones howling and leaping for the 
 glory of Cerus and Bacchus ; from the wars of extermination, with all their 
 terrors, waged in behalf of this or that god, this or that dogma, waged by 
 nation against nation, sect against sect, or priest against priest, down to 
 the milder though no less inhuman form of persecution and exclusion for 
 opinion's sake; from animal victims slaughtered upon the altar on Mount 
 Moriah to victimized reason sacrificed in seminaries and churches ; from 
 the Jew's and Musselman's circumcision to the Christian sacrament of 
 baptism; from the Jew's and Musselman's fasts to cancel their sins to the 
 Christian's eating and drinking the transubstantiated flesh and blood of 
 the Savior for the very same end, with all the mysteries and absurdities 
 connected with the rites ; it is safe to maintain that there is hardly an 
 absurdity, a folly or cruelty invented by imagination which at one time or 
 another has not been used as a holy rite, and conscientiously practiced in 
 this or that corner of the earth as means of worshiping God, atoning for 
 sins, obtaining redemption and achieving salvation. 
 
 Most remarkable, perhaps, in this matter is, that people with these facts 
 before their eyes, can not convince themselves that means and forms are 
 subject to change, hence that none of them could be intended to be ever-
 
 93 
 
 lasting, to suit all men under all climates and under all circumstances ; 
 furthermore that all means and forms, observances and practices, whatever 
 end they may have in view, if they are foolish or absurd, i. e., contrary to 
 reason, barbarous or cruel, i. e., contrary to humanitarian principles, or even 
 unaesthetic and offensive to the refined taste of any age or locality, they must 
 also be contrary to the Law of God. for the end does not justify any bad 
 means. And yet, in those very means and forms, observances and practices, 
 there is the main cause of the " Disagreements " among Jews, Christians 
 and Mohammedans. As nearly as men can agree on abstract questions, all 
 agree on the main principles of faith, the principal doctrines of religion; all 
 stand upon the platform of the Sinaic revelation, and all intend and hope 
 to enter the everlasting covenant between God and man. The u Disagree- 
 ments " reduce themselves exclusively to means and forms. 
 
 The worst in this matter is, that those very " Disagreements " were and 
 are even now, to a certain extent, the causes of bewildering superstitions 
 and ridiculous prejudices of man against his neighbor, which clog reason 
 and obscure the conscience ; and of that wild and reckless fanaticism which 
 is fraught with nameless misery and woe. Because it is so, one should 
 think it is the duty of every philanthropist to wage war upon all those means 
 and forms, observances and practices, which cause the mischief, the separa- 
 tion, disintegration and hostility. But unfortunately man can not do with- 
 out them ; history proves that he can not. Man can not be and will never 
 be without religion, and religion consists of abstract truths, doctrines, pre- 
 cepts and commandments, which are essentially spiritual and formally ab- 
 stract. These abstract truths must be reduced to practice by tangible means, 
 concrete forms, inherited observances, which become holier by age and im- 
 portant by general consent. Besides there are quite a number of people who 
 never reason, never reflect, never think beyond a certain limit. With them 
 the concrete form has assumed the importance of the spirit. You break the 
 form, and all their religion with its hope and consolation, with its soothing, 
 controlling and guiding effects, is lost to them. You say they worship the 
 form or the means, they are idolaters, let their idolatry be destroyed for the 
 sake of truth. Perhaps they are ; but they are nevertheless men and breth- 
 ren and fellow-creatures and children of your God and mine, you must take 
 care of them, you dare not deprive them of that religion which they possess, 
 which satisfies, controls and guides them. Therefore, the philanthropist 
 must be slow and considerate in his attempts to eradicate those causes of 
 evils which befall man. 
 
 On the other hand those means and forms are of grave importance to the 
 most intelligent as well as to the most illiterate. However intelligent, 
 learned and enlightened a man may be, he must nevertheless tell himself, I
 
 94 
 
 do believe in God, revelation, providence, freedom, justice, the brotherhood 
 and immortality of man ; I do not wish to tear these convictions out of my 
 soul, and even if I should, I could not do it, for I can not change hu- 
 man nature, nor can I control the power of reason and conscience whose 
 dicta these beliefs are. I must naturally ask myself: How shall I express 
 the veneration, gratitude and love which I feel to my Maker; how shall I 
 worship Him, for whom my soul yearns and pants, as panteth the hart 
 after the brooks of water? and how shall I give utterance to the regret, the 
 sorrow, the repentance and the remorse I feel over the misdeeds I have com- 
 mitted ; how shall I heal the burning wound in my conscience? and how 
 shall I withstand all the temptations of lust and passion, and nourish my 
 soul with goodness and wisdom to escape death and become worthy of 
 God's grace? These are exactly the same questions which the Prophet Micah 
 asked and which every conscientious man must ask himself sometimes. 
 Levity and carelessness in those things may do for awhile, but not for- 
 ever. Every man has his conscientious scruples ; in every man the voice of 
 his better nature speaks at one time or another. The literature of the civil- 
 ized world suggests that man rather thinks too much than too little over 
 those questions. Four-fifths of the whole Jewish literature, Bible, Talmud 
 and Midrash included, treats on these very questions; and the theological 
 library of Christians and Mohammedans is immense. 
 
 As man is generally expected to believe too much, which has caused 
 many to believe little or nothing, so is he also expected to do too much for 
 his salvation. The simple answer of the Prophet Micah to those paramount 
 queries. u Be right, be good, be true,'' was overlooked and submerged under 
 a flood of speculations, in which all those sandbanks and rocks of " Disa- 
 greements " threaten destruction to the frail bark of religion. We must 
 look to our chart and compass, to reason and conscience on the one hand, 
 to the Sinaic revelation on the other, in order to ascertain our course, to de- 
 cide whether the Prophet Micah or the vulgar theology furnishes correct 
 answers to man's paramount queries. Reason answers, man is a complete 
 individual in his physical organism. He is in possession of all those or- 
 gans and qualities which are necessary to sustain himself and preserve his 
 race. Spiritually also he must be a complete " little world " with all the 
 capacities and faculties to sustain himself and preserve his identity intact 
 as a spiritual individual in time and eternity. As he possesses organs of 
 digestion, nutrition and assimilation, which perform their task without any 
 aid from abroad, so he possesses by the grace of his Maker the capacities 
 and faculties to become free, intelligent, noble, generous, eminently self- 
 conscious, immortal and happy. As he possesses the capacities to reach 
 human perfection, he must be able to reach happiness, for happiness is in
 
 95 
 
 perfection only. In as far then as he has reached human perfection, he has 
 reached happiness; and inasmuch as the happiness of perfection is not an 
 organic sensation, it is a spiritual satisfaction, which must be co-eternal 
 with the spirit itself. This is reason's answer to those paramount queries, 
 sealed and confirmed by man's conscience and consciousness. It tells us, 
 man is his own guide and compass. He is the sole author of his own weal 
 or woe. He is his own Heaven or hell. Healthy food and exercise 
 strengthen the body. Healthy moral and spiritual food strengthen the 
 soul. The body grows, so does the soul. The body develops to human 
 perfection, so does the soul, by the nutriment which either of them re- 
 ceives ; with the only distinction that the growth of body has its natural 
 limits, as all matter has, and.the growth of spirit is subject to no perceptible 
 limits, it is unlimited, and therefore immortal, eternal. It is the will in 
 man, as Elihu said in the Book of Job, which makes of the one a sound, 
 strong and skilled laborer, and of the other a delicate and indolent spec- 
 tator. It is the will which makes of the one an energetic, intelligent, en- 
 lightened, honest and upright apostle of righteousness ; and of the other a 
 useless camp-follower. It is the will which rouses one to the height of self- 
 consciousness and immortality and eternal happiness, and leaves the other 
 in a perpetual dream-life here, hence also in Sheol. The will and you your- 
 selves are identical. Your will is yourself. It is nothing outside of your 
 own being. You will it earnestly and energetically, and yours must be im- 
 mortality and happiness; you will it not and remain slumbering in the 
 embrace of vegetable and animal functions here and in Sheol there. The 
 will receives incentive and impetus from abroad, you say; but they must 
 go through his reason and conscience, and with the well-developed mind, 
 the well-balanced mind, the will is guided by them, that is to say, the will 
 is free. Will, reason and conscience are no three things, they are the 
 functions of the same soul. In the mind symmetrically developed, reason 
 decides correctly, in perfect consonance with the conscience; and directs the 
 will, as the compass directs the ship. To rise to self-conscious immor- 
 tality and happiness is in man's power exclusively ; it depends on no cir- 
 cumstances and no outer influences. Man is to all intents and purposes a 
 free and independent being. This is the answer of reason to our moment- 
 ous questions, decisive to all who believe in God and man's God-like na- 
 ture. The gifts of grace are all in man and in all men. 
 
 Does the Sinaic revelation teach the same doctrine? We think it does. 
 Revelation and reason must not contradict each other. Still we can not 
 answer this query until we shall have examined into the means of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 The first means of salvation, they say, is faith. But faith is too indefi-
 
 96 
 
 nite and homonymous a term ; none can fix its meaning exactly. It meant 
 one thing with Paul and another with the Church of history, one thing 
 with St. Augustine and another with Albertus Magnup, one thing with the 
 Catholic and another with the Protestant Church, while in its dogmatic 
 sense it has no meaning for the non-Christian. The first means of salva- 
 tion, known to all and understood by all, is the desire of man to worship 
 God. This desire or volition has its origin in two facts of the conscious- 
 ness, viz : the consciousness of God as the Supreme Being, on whose power, 
 wisdom and goodness we depend, and whose greatness and glory we ad- 
 mire ; and secondly the consciousness of man's spiritual and God-like na- 
 ture, his revelation and accountability to God, his admiration and venera- 
 tion of the loftiest ideal of the good and the true. This desire or volition 
 to worship God is the ground form of religion. It is not the inactive faith, 
 belief or confidence in the Supreme Being, nor is it a mere emotion or effect 
 produced by external agency. It is a free-will motion of the soul seeking 
 communion with God, rising, as it were, above this world's fluctuations, 
 above its own earthly habitation to the world of spirit and eternity. This 
 desire or volition to worship, so common to man, is the impetus, the incen- 
 tive to the soul to seek spiritual food in the domain of spirit, to develop, to 
 grow, to proceed and progress on the path toward human perfection and 
 happiness. To this end and purpose, to speak teleologicully, this desire was 
 impressed on human nature. One might say, if you wish to ascertain 
 how far you have advanced to immortality and happiness, measure your 
 desire or volition to worship God, and you have the solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 Does the Sinaic revelation maintain that this holy desire of man comes 
 from an agency outside of himself ? Does it prescribe the methods and 
 forms in which a man should worship God? It does neither, although it be- 
 gins with the solemn and impressive lesson teaching the One Eternal God 
 and Providence, and by its very fact of God communicating with man im- 
 presses one forcibly and indelibly with man's God-like nature. It simply 
 prohibits the having or making of gods, or believing in any besides Jeho- 
 vah, and commands not to show them that honor which is due only to the 
 GREAT I AM. These honors are expressed in two simple terms, the first of 
 which is subjective, Lo Thishtachaveh, personal service or worship ; and the 
 second is objective, Lo Tho'obdem, worship by objective deeds. So we know 
 that in the Sinaic revelation Israel was commanded to worship God sub- 
 jectively and objectively, with the inner emotions and motions of man, and 
 with outward deeds. Both points are expounded in Deuteronomy vi. 5, in 
 the Shema. Concerning the subjective point it is ordained, " And thou 
 shalt love Jehovah thy Elohim with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and all
 
 -97- 
 
 thy might "; and concerning the objective point, it is commanded that man, 
 should perpetually have the laws of God upon his heart, impress them on 
 his children, speak freely and clearly of them, and make them known to 
 his fellow-man by all lawful means of impressing them. That is all the 
 form of worship contained in the Sinaic revelation, to which was added 
 the permission to erect an altar of earth, simple and transitory, because 
 the whole civilized world then worshiped by sacrifices, which was a mere 
 permission without the intention of permanency. 
 
 When Moses constructed a state with its policy and polity upon the Sinaic 
 principles with special reference to the wants and habits of his people then 
 and there, he organized for them a sacrificial culte with a special priest- 
 hood, similar to what they had seen and venerated in Egypt; although in 
 ordaining those laws he certainly could not think of permanency, as none 
 could prescribe for all coming generations how to worship. Forms and 
 methods change ; eternal in these laws is only the Sinaic command, that 
 man should worship God both subjectively and objectively, in himself and 
 by good deeds outside of himself. Therefore the methods and forms of di- 
 vine worship changed so often in Israel and among all denominations believ- 
 ing in the Sinaic revelation. The principle, however, remained that worship 
 must be intelligent, humane and spiritual, within the soul and by its own 
 promptings and the manifestation of good, noble and generous deeds ; to 
 Jehovah only and none besides Him. 
 
 Here is one of the means of grace, its name is divine worship, free, noble, 
 intelligent and humane. The Sinaic revelation acknowledges this as the 
 first means of grace, to rouse the soul to human perfection, to immortality 
 and the happiness of perfection. In this point, you see, the Sinaic revela- 
 tion fully corresponds with the dicta of reason. There is no hostility and 
 no conflict between reason and revelation. The gifts of grace are in man, 
 and his is the freedom and ability to make proper use of them. 
 
 I am sorry that I can not finish my subject this evening, and beg you to 
 hear me again on this subject next Friday evening. 
 
 ' N 
 
 13
 
 XV. 
 
 GIFTS OF GRACE, REDEMPTION AND SALVATION. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 The innate desire of man to worship is a gift of grace bestowed upon him 
 by his Maker. It is in him, part and parcel of his very nature. It remains 
 with him from the early dawn of consciousness to the hour of death. It 
 rouses him to seek that which is higher and holier than carnal pleasures, 
 to long for the eternal and absolute, and prompts him to yearn after spir- 
 itual nutriment, on which the soul grows, thrives, develops and rises to hu- 
 man perfection and happiness, immortality and bliss. It is the most efficient 
 gift of grace. As soon as one begins to think correctly of God, his own soul, 
 and the relation of both, he becomes a better man ; inasmuch as he rises 
 above the vulgar venality and sensuality of his animal nature, steps, so to 
 say, outside of -himself, and seeks an ideal of perfection above himself. 
 When this fundamental knowledge moves his will to that intense volition 
 to worship, to admire, to venerate and to adore that highest ideal of perfec- 
 tion, he has become wide awake to the destiny of man, to develop and train 
 himself to an immortal being, a pure and self-conscious personality. He is 
 on his way to salvation. The desire to worship is the first gift of grace, the 
 innate means to rise from earth to heaven, from darkness to light, from 
 brutal selfishness to human perfection, from Sheol to the presence of the 
 Most High. It is the only form of resurrection of which we can form a dis- 
 tinct idea. Man rises from his cosmic existence to the dignity of a spiritual 
 personality, as the planet emerges from the boundless sea of cosmic matter 
 to the condition of an individual body. 
 
 The struggle between sensuality and spirituality, selfishness and univer- 
 sality, darkness and light, death and immortality, is in the nature of man. 
 He could not be man without it; he would be either brute or angel. He 
 could not have a free will, hence his virtues and vices would be equally in- 
 different. We can not tell why it is so, but we know that it is so; nor do 
 we know about any existence why it is so, we can only know that it is so. 
 The moral law is based upon that existent struggle. The education of man 
 is accomplished under it. His goodness is the sum total of victories in this 
 perpetual combat. His wickedness is made up of the defeats which he sus- 
 tained. No man is without his victories, none without his defeats in this 
 process of life, the dialectics of antitheses, the continual culmination of het-
 
 99 
 
 erogeneous elements. The sinless man is a fantasm, a theological fiction, 
 like the mathematical point and the atom in science, a thought-thing with- 
 out reality. Dogmatics fancied a sinless man, who, as a legitimate sequence, 
 had to be made a god ; for a sinless man is something like a mountain with- 
 out a valley, which is simply unthinkable. 
 
 In this struggle between good and evil, in which man is engaged to the 
 very moment of his death, he is given a natural ally which is another gift of 
 grace ; its name is repentance. Like the desire of worship the feeling of 
 repentance is specifically human, not a trace of which is discernible in the 
 individuals of the two organic kingdoms. Man, he often knows not why, 
 repents his misdeeds, and he does so by his own free will, by peculiar emo 
 tions of his conscience. Instinctively he feels dissatisfied, a feeling of shame 
 comes over him, which is followed by remorse and not seldom by self-con- 
 tempt and the ardent wish not to have committed that misdeed. First he sus- 
 pects that every man knows of his wickedness, so that the slightest allusion 
 to it, or even an accidental word, irritates and mortifies him ; until it dawns 
 in his soul that the all-seeing eye of God beholds the deeds of man and 
 nothing is hidden before it. Then awakens in him that burning pain which 
 has driven so many to despair, madness and self-destruction ; that undeni- 
 able hell-fire, which consumes the marrow of life and burneth to the lowest 
 Sheol. It follows him on the path of life like an evil demon, it retires with 
 him to his solitary chamber, troubles him in his dreams, and rises with him 
 from his couch to torment him again. 
 
 Repentance, this most humiliating and most aggravating of all feelings, 
 rises in man; it comes not from without; rises from the free will and the 
 consciousness of the good in man, to war upon his own wickedness, his 
 own misdeeds; to burn them out of his soul ; to turn him away from the 
 path of evil ; to prompt him to seek a higher standard of rectitude and a 
 firmer will to be guided by it ; and wherever it may be possible to repair 
 the mischief done and obliterate the cause and effect of sin. It is the gift 
 of grace given alike to Jew and Christian, Mohammedan and Pagan. It is 
 roused in man by a number of causes, many of which are seemingly acci- 
 dental ; but it is chiefly aroused in him by the exercise of the first gift of 
 grace, viz: the desire to worship. He places himself before God; he 
 stands before the All-just; he compares himself with the Most High; he 
 attempts to commune and to converse with the Most Holy ; he must neces- 
 sarily become aware of his own faults and shortcomings, and behold the 
 writing on the wall, Menai, Menai, TheJcel, Upharsin. It is this natural as- 
 sociation of ideas, and not either circumcision or baptism, either a par- 
 ticular act of grace or the function of a holy ghost or a personal Yetzer hat- 
 tob; either this or that particular form of worship which rouses in man
 
 100 
 
 this second gift of grace, repentance, from potentiality to actuality. In 
 this connection it certainly depends not upon how he worships, it depends 
 upon what he worships. The form is indifferent. If one worships the 
 Most Holy God, the God of justice and truth, the Eternal God of the Sinaic 
 revelation whose insignia are truth, justice and purity, worship must lead 
 him to repentance of sin, with or without sacrifices, fasts or sacraments. t 
 
 Few men will deny that the consciousness of guilt and crime with its 
 shame, remorse, self-contempt, genuine and sincere repentance is the only 
 knowable hell-fire. The doubts begin with the question, Does repentance 
 work atoneme'nt? or, in other words, does God forgive sins because the 
 sinner repents? This is a point of " Disagreement " among the various de- 
 nominations. The ancient teachers of Judaism maintained En Vcho Dabar 
 she-omed mippenei hat-Theshuba. " Nothing (no sin) can stand before re- 
 pentance." Repentance wipes out every guilt, it burns out every sin. It 
 is the baptism with fire. They prescribed various means to assist the effi- 
 cacy of repentance, like confession, humiliation before God and man (no 
 auricular confession), prayer, fasting and abstinence in general, the giving 
 of alms, and practicing other humanitarian benevolence, exercising the 
 mind in the study of God's law, and such other means ; but they are the 
 means only to express and actualize the change of mind and to strengthen 
 the will of the sinner, in walking steadfastly on the path of righteousness, 
 and are of no avail without the main gift of grace, viz : sincere and genuine 
 repentance of misdeeds and the thorough change of mind. They learned 
 this of the ancient Prophets of Israel, who knew of no other means to ob- 
 literate sin besides repentance and change of mind. Neither sacrifices nor 
 fasts, neither afflictions nor prayers were looked upon by them as means of 
 atonement. In all forms of speech they called men to repentance, and 
 promised in the most beautiful metaphors remission of sins to the repent- 
 ing sinner. Those ancient teachers and prophets understood the Laws of 
 Moses to the effect that the sacrifices and the observances connected there- 
 with were mere symbols, simple means in correspondence with that age 
 and its tastes, to express and actualize the change of mind, to strengthen 
 and satisfy the morbid will of the sinner. Sin is subjective ; God is not of- 
 fended^; man is lowered and disgraced by it. Repentance is self-punish- 
 ment and self-elevation. It purges the soul and starts it on its upward way 
 to God and righteousness. In so far as sin is objective in its effects upon 
 our fellow-men, it is the penitent's duty to repair the breach, to amend the 
 damage and appease the injured fellow-man. The penitent must obliterate 
 both the cause and the effect of his sins. The penitent punishes and cor- 
 rects himself. If he succeeds therein every other punishment or correction 
 would be unjust and unnecessary, and mast not be expected of the All-just
 
 101 - 
 
 God, of whom we are told : " The Rock, perfect are His doings, for all his 
 ways are justice, a God of faithfulness and no wrong, righteous and up- 
 right is He." 
 
 Mohammedanism, in the main, adopted this Jewish idea of remission of 
 sins by repentance, although it proposes other means in addition to those 
 of the Jewish prophets and rabbis. In the New Testament both John and 
 Jesus announce the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven by repentance. The 
 idea of vicarious atonement is the product of the Christianity of histor}', 
 not of its founder or founders, as I believe I have proved in my little book, 
 u The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth," and I do not like to repeat my own 
 arguments. This ex-post facto speculation forms the main body of Chris- 
 tian dogmatics, and is based upon the hypothesis that the death of the 
 Messiah must have been a special act of Providence for some specific pur- 
 pose. Gradually the expounders persuaded themselves into the belief that 
 he died as a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of others. The idea sug- 
 gested itself from an ancient belief of Semitic Pagans, like the King of 
 Moab, who sacrificed the sons of kings to obviate national calamities, and 
 was utilized to convert Heathen and also Jews, after the altar had been de- 
 stroyed, the ancient polity abrogated, and they were left without their 
 time-honored form of worship. It belongs to the class of means ; it is not 
 principle, and is without the least foundation in Moses, the Prophets, the 
 Rabbis, Jesus and even Paul. The Sinaic revelation informs us that only 
 one sin, viz : taking the name of God in vain, is so grievous that God 
 would not hold him guiltless who commits it. This, of course, suggests 
 that other sins are forgiven, as it is plainly stated in the supplementary 
 revelation, " He forgiveth iniquity, transgression and sin." But the idea 
 of vicarious atonement has no foothold in that revelation. Therefore, the 
 Christian theologians adopted the whole Jewish theory of the remission of 
 sins, and added the vicarious atonement, which appears superfluous to Jews 
 and Mohammedans. Moses informs us that God said to him, when he of- 
 fered himself as a vicarious atonement, " Him, who sinned unto me, will I 
 blot out from my book." The Prophet Ezekiel said, " The person that sin- 
 neth, he shall be put to death." Justice dictates that the guilty one be 
 punished, and not the innocent instead of the guilty. Reason responds, if 
 the effect of sin is in me, a stain in my soul, it can no more be removed by 
 the meritorious deeds of another person than I could be cured of any dis- 
 ease by the remedy which my physician swallows. If sin is a negative 
 quantity, that I have so much less spiritual substance in my soul as I have 
 neglected my duties to God and man, neglected to increase and grow in 
 goodness and enlightenment; then all the surplus which others might pos- 
 sess, can as little replace the deficiency in me as the years of his life could
 
 102 
 
 be added to mine, or mine to his, to make up any relative deficiency. If 
 the solidarity of mankind goes so far that all mankind has but one soul, as 
 some Christian theologians advanced, and God or his Son died for the sin 
 of that all-soul ; then the individual can not commit sin, and needs no 
 atonement, and the death of the Son is the atonement for all, Heathens, 
 cannibals, murderers, Jews and infidels included, and whatever we poor 
 mortals do is perfectly indifferent, as the all-soul or the soul of all is re- 
 deemed anyhow. We can find no reason for the doctrine of vicarious 
 atonement, either Scriptural or philosophical, and we have no need of any 
 hypothesis, doctrine or dogma to explain the life and death, the work and 
 offices of the Messiah, his godhead or manhood, his resurrection or second 
 advent, as we who stand upon the standpoint of the Sinaic revelation and 
 reason need no Messiah whatever, and no Messianic doctrines in any form, 
 as I believe I have proved in my last course of lectures " On the Origin 
 and History of the Messianic Idea." We propose to believe as much as we 
 rationally can, and no more. When we are asked to believe and to do 
 more than is necessary, more than is reasonable, we must beg to be excused. 
 You see we all agree in principle, viz, that sins are forgiven. We also 
 agree that there could be no remission of sins without sincere and genuine 
 repentance. We furthermore agree in most of the means, such as humilia- 
 tion before God and man, confession, giving alms and the like. But we dis- 
 agree in other means, and the dogma of vicarious atonement is no more 
 than that. From this one " Disagreement " many others arise, so many, in- 
 deed, that they divide the believers in the Sinaic revelation into three main 
 religious bodies and numerous, small factions or sects. This makes of 
 Christianity a tribal and sectional religion in conflict with man's reason. 
 Therefore, those who believe in the universal and eternal character of the 
 Sinaic revelation and the final triumph of God's truth can hardly doubt 
 that this " Disagreement" also will be overcome, and the religion of the 
 future man will contain no Christology. The future man will need no 
 Messiah and no redeemer, no baptism and no circumcision, no months, no 
 weeks, no days of fasting and atonement, and no sacraments of bread and 
 wine, no mediator in Heaven and none on earth, no priest and no rites, in 
 order to secure salvation for his soul ; for neither of all these and all other 
 means are contained in the Sinaic revelation or based upon the pure dicta 
 of reason. Whatever is not either in revelation or reason is of the sponta- 
 neous generation of fancy and purely accidental. Fantasms and acci- 
 dental productions last as long as they are serviceable to man, so long and 
 no longer, the true only is eternal, and this must be found either in reason 
 or revelation. The future man, if our means of preservation and com- 
 munication be not miraculously destroyed, will see the noonday of en-
 
 - 103 
 
 lightenment, discard all superstitions and recognize means as mere means> 
 forms of a transitory nature ; then " Agreement " will grow out of " Dis- 
 agreement," and I venture to say the following articles of faith will satisfy 
 the most pious souls : 
 
 1. I believe in One, Eternal and Universal Jehovah. 
 
 2. I believe in man's godlike nature, with capacities to become -free, just, 
 pure, true, immortal and happy. 
 
 3. I believe in God's Law contained in the Sinaic revelation as the 
 standard of rectitude, the path of righteousness, the proof of God's provi- 
 dence and man's immortality by his godlike nature. 
 
 4. I believe in man's desire to worship God and the free will repentance 
 in his own conscience as the gifts of grace, to lead man onward to God on 
 the path of righteousness and upward to Him, immortality, human perfec- 
 tion and the happiness of perfection. 
 
 5. I believe in the freedom and equality of all men as the law of God 
 and the final and universal triumph of reason, justice and goodness over 
 all obstacles. 
 
 These five articles of faith, I opine, will satisfy them, to which I only 
 would wish to add, I believe that ignorance is the original sin and stupidity 
 is universal depravity, which must be vanquished by free schools, free 
 press, free speech and free thought. 
 
 I believe what all good and great men have said and thought in their re- 
 spective times and places, provided I be permitted to be my own judge as 
 to what is good, useful, practicable and applicable also in my time and 
 place.. * 
 
 This would complete the holy number seven, to which nothing ought to 
 be added ; or else I would propose this No. 8 : I believe all that is neces- 
 sary for man to believe, provided it is not in antagonism with reason and 
 conscience and the Sinaic revelation. 
 
 I do not mean to say that you should believe this and no more, or that 
 I do, for man is in many respects the product of history. No man can suc- 
 cessfully deny his parents and their teachings, although he is in nowise 
 exactly like them. Every generation varies and progresses. Gradually 
 only opinions, like types, change. But as both change and progress after 
 all, the religion of the future man, whenever that may be, might be based 
 upon those articles of faith. It is evident that we are advancing to some 
 such ultimate point as the universal republic, universal religion, one God 
 and one human family. If the world is satisfied to reach that objective 
 point at once, we Jews are satisfied and willing to join the mutual benevo- 
 lent society of all mankind, with the firm conviction that this is the will 
 of God and the ultimate destiny of man on earth.
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE JUDAISM OF HISTORY. 
 
 Man, they maintain, is the creature of circumstances. This is true of 
 minors whose understanding is not strong enough to resist the outer influ- 
 ences and to govern them, and of that class of childlike people who never 
 reach the estate of maturity and personal independence. The accom- 
 plished man rises above the circumstances and governs them. According 
 to the philosophy of Moses Maimonides on Providence, the accomplished 
 man, i. e., the intelligent and righteous, is governed by his reason, by 
 means of which, and in proportion to his perfection, Providence is mani- 
 fested in him and counsels him ; while the neglected man, i. e., the thought- 
 less and wicked, is the play-ball of accident and casualty to the same ex- 
 tent as the other individuals of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Man 
 is no more the result of his parents than the candle light is the result of 
 the gas flame at which it was lit, or vice versa. He inherits dispositions, 
 and no more than that; and all dispositions are subject to reason and con- 
 science. Like Isaac and Rebecca, many parents have two sons, or even 
 twin-brothers, the one of which becomes Israel, " the prince of the Lord," 
 and the other an Esau, a rough hunter. 
 
 The forms and methods, however, which are the instruments and imple- 
 ments of reason and conscience to become actualized and influential, are of 
 slow growth. They are constructed and crystalized by experience and re- 
 peated application, hence they are inherited from generation to generation. 
 Reason and conscience submit to them only by the force of authority, the 
 authority of parents and teachers, political and church government, tradi- 
 tion and literature. Forms and methods are inherited, imposed like the 
 different styles of garments. Therefore, we can speak of a Judaism, Chris- 
 tianity or Mohammedanism of history, as these religious systems devel- 
 oped their peculiar forms and methods in course of time, although all three 
 of them started from the Sinaic revelation ; without admitting for a mo- 
 ment that reason and conscience are not the superior authority, to which to 
 appeal our right is reserved ; or that the " Differences " in those three re- 
 ligious systems are not the mere disagreements in form and method. 
 
 Let us review first the Judaism of history. According to the testimony 
 of the Pentateuch, Moses was the first teacher of forms and methods, to 
 actualize the Sinaic principles, doctrines and laws for the practical life of a
 
 105 
 
 nation. He built up a State upon the underlying principles of the moral 
 law with its two pillars of freedom and equality ; and a religion with its 
 polity upon the basis of pure monotheism, the most high and most holy 
 One in covenant with Israel. Like all eminent statesmen and legislators, 
 he was obliged to do justice to inherited forms, methods and institutions, 
 and subordinated them to the system on which he built. While in the 
 construction of the State and the laws, he was obliged to accept slavery, 
 bigamy, the avenger of blood, the law of retaliation, the right of conquest 
 and other heritages ; he modified them according to the underlying prin- 
 ciple, abolishing slavery among the Hebrews and protecting the heathen 
 slave by humane enactments; establishing the freedom and equal rights of 
 woman, to counteract polygamy, and ordaining monogamy for the priest 
 as a pattern to the people ; the cities of refuge to counteract the barbarity 
 of bloody revenge; the ransom with money in the case of bodily injuries, 
 to modify the law of retaliation; the system of voluntary military service 
 exclusively, with laws to protect the lives of non-combatants, property and 
 female chastity, in case of war to counteract wars of conquest, and so on. 
 There was so much barbarism to be obliterated that he could not overcome 
 all of it at once. He did the same thing precisely in the religious institu- 
 tions. He crmld not eradicate the ancient and universal form of worship 
 by bloody sacrifices, and could only regulate and modify it in accordance 
 with the underlying Sinaic principles. He gave them a harmless priest- 
 hood, which was a mere shadow of the mighty priesthood of Egypt. At 
 the same time he taught them two other forms of worship, one in the prac- 
 tice of charity and benevolence, and another in maintaining and preserv- 
 ing the Law, the rights, claims, liberties, intelligence, morality, happiness 
 and well-being of God's chosen people, the perpetuation of the divine cove- 
 nant. He taught them that the objective form of divine worship consists 
 not of the sacrifices only; charity and benevolence, justice and righteous- 
 ness, the protection of freedom and the advancement of enlightenment are 
 other forms of divine worship no less acceptable to the most high and most 
 holy God than any other form. 
 
 The Israelites obeyed or rebelled, went through periods of national glory 
 and happiness or degradation and misery. The logical and illogical ele- 
 ments, the Sinaic revelation and the world's Paganism, the civilizing and 
 enlightening agency of the laws of Moses and the barbarism of the sur- 
 rounding nation?, light and darkness collided in the course of history, so 
 that the one now and the other then was victorious in Israel. When idol- 
 atry and despotism domineered on the one side, and on the other the sacri- 
 ficial culte degenerated into another form of Paganism, the Prophets arose 
 
 14
 
 106 - 
 
 and thundered those divine messages into the ears of the deluded masses, 
 corrupt priests and kings, called them back home to the Sinaic revelation, the 
 divine covenant, the wise and benevolent laws of Moses, and Judaism became 
 in their hand a purely spiritual religion, as its essence is, without any par- 
 ticular forms besides those advanced by Moses to counterpoise the sacri- 
 ficial polity. Besides Ezekiel, who proposed reforms in the institutions of 
 public worship, which, however, were never adopted, the Prophets advo- 
 cated no kind of forms and methods, so that Judaism became purely spir- 
 itual in their hands. Therefore, they succeeded only in improving the 
 morals, enlightening the minds, correcting abuses, diminishing the impor- 
 tance attached to forms, and directing the minds to the essence and import 
 of the Law ; and could not change practically anything either in the form 
 of government or in the inherited forms and methods in general. The 
 progress achieved was in the spreading spirituality and the clearer concep- 
 tions of the religious and moral truths among the accessible portion of the 
 people, and stirring up that national self-consciousness which saved the na- 
 tion from utter amalgamation with the surrounding nationalities, and 
 then among those of Assyria and Babylonia. 
 
 [Permit me to remark here that th^ peculiar hypothesis of modern critics 
 who set Moses after the Prophets is historically illegitimate and philo- 
 sophically untenable; because there is no cause to assume that the writers 
 of the sacred history did not know better than their critics of from two 
 thousand to three thousand years later; no cause to assume that the au- 
 thors of the holiest books of mankind were willful impostors; no cause to 
 assume that the lottiest and purely spiritual aspect of any religion or code 
 of laws preceded its concrete, practical and popular state.] 
 
 After fifty years of captivity in Babylon, forty two thousand men, with 
 their families, returned to Palestine to re-establish the Hebrew people upon 
 its ancient soil. The first public act of theirs was to rebuild the altar and 
 then the temple, and revive the ancient form of worship, precisely as it was 
 before. They would not and could not change the form, although besides 
 the law of the covenant, the doctrine and laws of the Sinaic revelation, 
 they made no attempt to introduce again the Mosaic law. Seventy years 
 later, when Ezra and then Nehemiah came to Palestine, the laws of Moses 
 considerably modified were reintroduced, together, however, with new en- 
 actments and methods. It was a new phase of Judaism, which was again 
 considerably modified by the advance of Grecian culture into Asia, from and 
 after the time of Alexander the Great. Persian, and afterward Grecian ele- 
 ments, amalgamated with purely Jewish. The Scribes gradually took the 
 place of the priests and prophets. They expounded the Law and also the 
 Prophets, thu& expounded and translated, it was no longer the living orig-
 
 - 107- 
 
 ina'l. The additions and changes in the temple service were numerous and 
 characteristic. The synagogues replaced the altars upon the " Heights," 
 the Thorah replaced the Ark of the Covenant, prayers, hymns and music, 
 teaching and expounding assumed the importance of sacrifices and priestly 
 rites, and gradually a new phase of Judaism took root among the people. 
 The attempt at a sudden and abrupt change of forms and methods by 
 Grecized Hebrews and Antiochus Epiphanes with his lieutenants, led to the 
 remarkable rebellion under the Maccabees and resulted in a complete vic- 
 tory of the orthodox element and the independence -of the country. But 
 the natural and gradual change of forms and methods remained the very 
 same as before, and went on without restriction. New laws were made, new 
 customs established, new methods were invented to expound the ancient 
 laws, new forms took the place of the older, and new parties, Pharisees, 
 Sadducees and Essenes, stepped in with new issues. When finally the He- 
 brew commonwealth was overthrown, the capital, temple and altar were de- 
 stroyed, the ancient polity was abrogated, the casement was broken, and 
 the new form and method of Judaism, gradually developed during previous 
 centuries, at once took the place of the older forms and methods which had 
 been dropped or changed gradually, imperceptibly and naturally. It ap- 
 peared as rabbinical Judaism on the one hand, and as Messianic or dena- 
 tionalized Judaism, afterward Christianity, on the other hand. The litera- 
 tures on both sides are the Mishnah, Tosephta. Mechilta, Saphra, Siphri and 
 some minor books on the part of the Jews, and the New Testament on 
 the part of the Messiahists. Both literatures were committed to writing 
 nearly simultaneously, in the second century of the Christian Era. That 
 Jewish literature mentioned contains the forms and methods, the laws, cus- 
 toms, doctrines and peculiar opinions of that new phase of Judaism together 
 with the history of that evolution and reconstruction, and many reminis- 
 cences and episodes scientific, historical, homiletical and juridical. That 
 literature cast the new phase of Judaism into a stereotyped form, just as the 
 New Testament was the stereotyped form for the other side, from which 
 gradually rose the Christianity of history. The principal work done by the 
 rabbis or Tana'im of the first and second centuries was to collect, compile, 
 criticise and systematize the material left from the Second Commonwealth of 
 the Hebrews. This material, however, was but partly written and in a variety 
 of scrolls. Much of it was verbally preserved and communicated tradition- 
 ally, and consisted in part of customs, maxims and precepts not found di- 
 rectly in the Bible. It was believed, however that " The custom of Israel is 
 law," hence every existing custom, maxim or precept must have its root in 
 the lawe of Moses. Special methods of expounding the law, the Rabbinical 
 Hermeneutics, were established not only in order to preserve every iota of
 
 108 
 
 that heritage, but also to prove that it is all founded upon the Bible. This 
 apparatus of the Tana'im is a portion of the rabbinical literature just men- 
 tioned 
 
 The teachers then certainly supposed that their labors had established 
 and finished the new phase of Judaism. They may have overlooked that 
 the very material which they compiled, systematized and codified was 
 the product of evolution; but neither their cotemporaries nor posterity lost 
 sight of that fact and that principle. Therefore the evolution continued. 
 Although that literature of the Tana'im was accepted and indorsed by their 
 successors, the Amoraim of Palestine and Babylon, as the established au- 
 thority, the latter claimed the right to comparative criticism, to establish 
 laws and precepts, and to enact new ones to meet new emergencies. The 
 underlying principle of perpetual development could not be stopped by any 
 written literature. And so the schools and courts of law as well as the syn- 
 agogue produced commentaries to the rabbinical material converted into 
 books, and these commentaries were called Gemara, '* the finishing," that 
 which settles finally the law, precept or custom, and points out their roots 
 and origin in the Bible. In course of time, however, the commentaries be- 
 came much larger and more important than the main matter. It was also 
 supposed that the matter had been exhausted. The schools and academies 
 declined in Palestine through the government of Christian emperors and the 
 continuous emigration in consequence thereof; and in Babylon on account of 
 the counter-pressure of Parseeism against Christianity, which bore heavily 
 also upon the Jews. It was apprehended that " The Law will be for- 
 gotten," and the rabbis began again to compile systematically in their own 
 way, both in Palestine and Babylon. The Mishna was taken as the main 
 text, and the commentaries were added to each paragraph thereof, together 
 with such other ethical, religious, historical and scientific fragments as the 
 compilers considered worth preserving. Toward the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury the compilation was closed in Palestine, and it is called the TALMUD 
 YERUSHALMI or also the " Gemara of the West." Toward the end of the 
 fifth century the compilation of the Babylonian rabbis was closed and called 
 the TALMUD BABLI. Other works, especially of a homiletic nature, called 
 Midrashim, and established rituals were added, always under the impression 
 that the Talmud and Midrashim would establish forever the forms and meth- 
 ods of Judaism. 
 
 Centuries of stability followed. The heads of Judaism, men of un- 
 doubted authority, resided in Babylon. They were called Saburaim in the 
 sixth century, and then Gueonim down to the end of the tenth century. 
 They were holy men, learned in the Law. They decided all questions ac- 
 cording to the Talmud for the Jews of Asia, Africa and Europe, and their
 
 109 
 
 decisions were laws for all Israel. The whole system was apparently im- 
 movable. The Talmud reigned by its expounders. Under that surface, 
 however, the law of evolution continued its work. The study of philosophy, 
 science and Grecian literature among the Arabs had its prominent apostles 
 among the Jews. Unexpectedly there arose among the Jews the sect of 
 the Karaites, who rejected the authority of the Talmud altogether, and 
 among the orthodox new lights arose and culminated at last in the unex- 
 pected fact that one of the Gueonim, Saadiah of Fiuma, sanctioned the 
 study of philosophy, and wrote a book on the subject. This was again the 
 beginning of a new period. The office of the Gueonim was abrogated. The 
 center of Judaism shifted from Asia into Europe, especially Spain, France 
 and Germany, and the forms and methods changed once more. 
 
 In Spain, under the sway of the Mohammedans, a new and vigorous spirit 
 broke through the forms and methods and built up that philosophical Ju- 
 daism which, always remaining upon the ancient basis of the Sinaic reve- 
 lation, produced on the one hand modern Judaism and influenced Chris- 
 tianity on the other hand, preparing its students for the Reformation. 
 Those Spanish Jews were not only faithful believers in the Sinaic revela- 
 tion, but also systematic philosophers, scientists, stern critics and honest 
 men beyond the reach of Pope and Council and outside the magic circle of 
 rabbinical and traditional forms and methods. While some of the greatest 
 among them, together with the French and German rabbis, cultivated the 
 Talmudical literature orthodoxly and commented and expounded, criti- 
 cised and codified the Talmud with more scientific skill than those of Baby- 
 lon exercised ; many were engaged in expounding Judaism from the 
 philosophical standpoint and leading it onward to new forms and methods. 
 
 Before we close this lecture, on the Judaism of history lean not exhaust 
 the subject in one lecture let us look back upon the change of standpoint 
 in various ages. Moses gave form and method to the substance of the 
 Sinaic revelation in State and Church, as it is called now. The form was 
 broken in the time of Samuel, when Saul was elected King of Israel, for 
 the King has no place in the laws of Moses. Whatever refers to a king in 
 those laws is certainly of much later origin. The methods were changed 
 by the Prophets, who insisted upon the spiritual and ethical contents of the 
 Law, and attached no importance to the observances and ceremonies. 
 When the Israelites were in captivity they did not observe the ceremonial 
 laws of Moses, although they adhered steadfastly to the Sinaic revelation, 
 the covenant and the promises. When they returned to Palestine the 
 Mosaic law was never introduced in all its parts, although Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah insisted upon organizing the Second Commonwealth on the same 
 basis as the first. During the existence of the Second Commonwealth an
 
 110 
 
 entirely new TUorah was developed, which found its expression in the 
 Mishnah. From the very beginning up to this point, there was no stability ; 
 there was perpetual change and evolution of forms and methods. Un- 
 changed and unchangeable in this perpetual fluctuation was only the Sinaic 
 revelation, the covenant. This remained the same forever. Whatever the 
 rabbis of the Talmud and their successors in Babylon did enact, introduce? 
 write and enforce, did not change an iota of the Sinaic revelation and the cove- 
 nant, although it did change laws and customs, forms and methods, re- 
 placed the old by new successors, always, however, in the same spirit and 
 from the same standpoint that all laws, customs and observances are sub- 
 ject to change, because they are mere forms and methods, however holy, 
 useful and beneficial they may be at this or that time or place ; eternal and 
 fixed is the word and covenant of God alone, and both are in the Sinaic 
 revelation. Among the mistakes which those Tanaim made every age 
 makes its mistakes, or else the successors could find nothing to improve was 
 that they compiled and imposed every law, custom and observance upon 
 the house of Israel under the impression that the nation, with all its pecu- 
 liarities and elements, must be preserved, to be politically restored, which 
 they expected to come to pass at once or in a very short time by a Messiah? 
 or otherwise. This made their code too political and too large, so that the 
 religious and ethical elements are almost hidden under the mountain of 
 political laws. The Christian writers dropped the political element alto- 
 gether, and attended to the religious and ethical exclusively ; therefore, the 
 New Testament, which in fact contains no more of it, spread more rapidly 
 than the rabbinical writings. This mistake maintained its hold upon the 
 Judaism of history, and still adheres to its orthodoxy. The Spanish school 
 of Jewish reasoners began to correct that mistake, and thus became the 
 source and starting-point of modern Judaism, as I expect to explain in 
 my next lecture, to which you are respectfully invited.
 
 XVII. 
 
 JUDAISM OF HISTORY. PART II. 
 
 Rabbinical Judaism is that religious system which, on the basis of the 
 material developed during the Second Commonwealth of the Hebrews, was 
 built up by the various rabbis between the first and tenth Christian cen- 
 turies, called Tanaim to the end of the second century, Amora'im to the 
 end of the fifth century, Sabura'im in the sixth century and GuJonim, to the 
 end of the tenth century. 
 
 With all the piety, patriotism, learning, sagacity and profound morality 
 of those various patristic teacher?, they made notably two mistakes. (1) 
 They considered every law of Moses eternally obligatory upon every Is- 
 raelite ; but most of those laws not being applicable under the emergencies 
 of various ages, they were explained in a manner to meet those emer- 
 gencies. Those decisions again being law, further decisions were again 
 based upon those secondary laws, so that the body of laws became enor- 
 mous, and in many instances obscured the laws of Moses, from which it 
 was supposed to be derived. (2) They were too scrupulous with the in- 
 herited customs, disciplines and laws, so that every possible detail and 
 doubt in the written and oral law was anxiously investigated, discussed 
 and fixed, which enormously increased the body of rabbinical law. It 
 took a man a lifetime to learn the whole law and carry it into practice. 
 
 The cause of all this was, in the first place, their scrupulously conscien- 
 tious desire to live exactly according to the laws of Moses and the rabbis ; and 
 in the second place, their reserved right, wherever they lived, to be gov- 
 erned by their own laws, in the Roman Empire as well as in Persia, Spain^ 
 France, Germany and elsewhere. This exercised an excellent influence 
 upon the Jewish mind, which was trained by the study of the Law, while 
 others studied and learned nothing besides legends and hob-goblin stories, 
 and made them conscientious, while knights and princes attended to their 
 feuds, fights, chases and the whipping of dogs, horses and peasants. The laws 
 of the rabbis protected the Israelite against the corruption of lawlessness 
 which was then the general law, the feudal and decretal laws of the rulers 
 of nations. The Talmud cultivated the Jew, when all other elements of 
 culture were confined to a few fraters in some convents, and a few scholasts 
 carefully hiding their opinions behind the barriers of bad Latin.
 
 112 
 
 Upon Judaism itself, as a religion, it had the evil effect that it distracted 
 the attention of rabbis and laymen from the spirit and essence of religion 
 and ethics, and captivated it in the mass of forms, observances and laws, 
 which imposed upon it the outward appearance of " no religion." The 
 Jew was a firm believer, a sound thinker in the Law, but he was no reasoner, 
 he had no philosophy of religion. This was certainly injurious to his in- 
 telligence. 
 
 The combat against this evil was opened by the Gaon Saadia of Fiuma, 
 in Egypt, and was continued by the Jewish philosophers of the Spanish 
 school in Spain and Southern France, in Northern Africa and Western 
 Asia, by prominent reasoners and scientists, especially physicians and as- 
 tronomers who were well versed also in rabbinical lore, down to the expul- 
 sion of the Jews from Spain in the year 1492. The principal teachers and 
 authors were Solomon Ibn Gabirol, who was the Vicebron of the Christian 
 students ; Bachia Ibn Pakudah, the moral philosopher ; Abraham Ibn 
 Daud, Judah Halevi, Abraham and Moses Ibn Ezra, Ibn Zadik, and the 
 Ibn Thibbon family, all of whom were the forerunners of Moses Maimon- 
 ides, who gave to the Jews not only his complete rabbinical code, Mishnah 
 Thorah, and a large number of rabbinical commentaries, philosophical and 
 medical writings, but also the first complete philosophy of religion in the 
 three volumes of his Moreh Nebuchim, from which Jews, Christians and 
 Mohammedans have adopted much for the advancement of rational religion. 
 He was the great harmonizer of reason an<5 faith. His successors were Ger- 
 sonides, Creskas (opponent), Joseph Albo, Shem Tob Palquira, Isaac 
 Arama, Samuel Sarsa, Isaac Abarbanel, and a host of others who made the 
 philosophy of Judaism their particular study, and spread it b} T Hebrew 
 translations (most of them wrote in Arabic) far and wide among the Jews 
 of the civilized world, and by Latin translations among Christian students, 
 although that Harvard College professor who lately wrote a text-book on 
 Judaism knows nothing about it. Those philosophers wrote also crit 
 ical commentaries on the Bible, especially Abraham Ibn Ezra, Levi Ger- 
 sonides and Isaac Abarbanel, commentaries which, in many instances, 
 revolutionized the old conceptions of the Bible, opened a new path to rea- 
 soners, and are still indispensable to Bible critics. 
 
 The new spirit cultivated by those philosophers and their cotemporaries 
 gave rise to three phases of Judaism. 1. The historical or rabbinical Ju- 
 daism which found its literature in the casuists and expounders of the Tal- 
 mud mostly among the Spanish scholars and authors, like Alfasi and hi.s 
 disciples, Maimonides and his disciples, Nachmanides, Rabbi Asher (Ger- 
 man) and his sons, Adereth and others, and the Franco-Germanic school of 
 Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac or Rashi, who expounded and codified system-
 
 113 
 
 atically the rabbinical material. It was again a new form of Judaism 
 which they sought to establish and crystalize it forever. But they could not 
 stop the law of evolution, and so there came behind them another corps of 
 expounders and codifiers whose labors culminated in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury in the Palestinean Joseph Oaro, in the Polish Moses Isserls, who were 
 again succeeded by others, perhaps of no less importance to Rabbinical Ju- 
 daism, up to the very noonday of the nineteenth century. In the form of 
 worship they went apart in the principal rituals with different shadings in 
 each, viz : the Portuguese or Sephardic, the Germanic or Minhag Ashkenaz, 
 and the Polish or Minhag Polen. 
 
 2. The Kabbalistic Judaism now called th Chassidism. Mysticism always 
 follows in the wake of rationalism. The philosopher endeavors to explain 
 everything, God, world, man, their relations, eternity and its mysteries, in 
 which he can not possibly succeed to the satisfaction of all men. He ex- 
 hausts himself and finally arrives at an inexplicable residue, which gives rise 
 to mysticism in the unsatisfied minds. This is a law of history, and was 
 also the case in Spain. Philosophy produced among its opponents that 
 mysticism in religion and expounding of the Bible which is called the Kabba- 
 lah, and has its main literature in the Zohar, an extensive commentary to 
 the five books of Moses, written in Spain, published and studied most ex- 
 tensively by Christians of the sixteenth century in Italy and Germany. This 
 remarkable compendium of mysticism and poetry, truth and fiction, gave 
 rise to a new literature among Jews and Christians, which at last culminated 
 in the practical Kabbalah, especially in the Orient, in Russia and Poland, 
 among pretending Messiahs, and among the so-called Chassidim, who are 
 most- numerous now in Russia, Galicia and Hungary. Their rabbis still 
 converse with the angels, banish evil spirits, cure diseases by amulets and 
 magic spells, are saints and workers of miracles. They are rabbinical Jews 
 to a certain extent only. The Zohar is their holy book, and the rabbi their 
 highest authority. Wherever this authority and that book collides with the 
 Talmud and its casuists, or even with the laws of Moses, they follow their 
 own established authority. Their ritual and form of worship are peculiar 
 to themselves. In this point the Palestinean Rabbi, Isaac Luria, is their 
 principal authority. Notwithstanding the fierce opposition of the orthodox 
 rabbis to Kabbalism, many of the opinions, views, prayer-, formulas and ob- 
 servances of the Kabbalists found their way into the later rabbinical litera- 
 ture, the orthodox liturgy and ritual, and became to the opposite side one 
 of the main causes of reforms in the synagogue. 
 
 3. The philosophical or rational Judaism, whose main literature was also 
 the Bible and the Talmud, differently expounded, however. The traditional 
 
 15
 
 _ 114 _ 
 
 methods and forms were not considered the highest authority, from which 
 there was no appeal to reason or science; free research and free thought 
 took the places of traditional beliefs and rabbinical laws, Talmudical or 
 post-Talmudical. The same relations of Judaism to the Talmud as the rela- 
 tion? of Protestants to the Fathers and traditions of the Church were gradu- 
 ally established. The Jewish beliefs and doctrines, as expounded in that 
 Spanish school, were placed conspicuously in front, the observances and rab- 
 binical laws were placed in the background ; reason, science and the progress 
 of ages were allowed a large share in forming the religious opinion. The 
 school of reasoners from Saadia down to Abarbanel became, by common con- 
 sent, the authority. 
 
 The Jews driven from Spain, persecuted in Germany, and oppressed 
 everywhere else, except in Holland and Belgium, driven in large numbers to 
 the Orient, into Russia and Poland, outside of the progressive culture of 
 Western Europe, fell back into an unreasoning orthodoxy, as oppressed and 
 persecuted people always do, and built up that rabbinism and kabbalism, 
 under which the masses are still held spellbound, as are the Mohammedans, 
 Greek and Roman Catholics of the same regions. Overawed and terrified by 
 priests, princes and mobs, deprived of the freedom of speech, pressed into 
 narrow ghettoes, ridiculed by petulant writers and travestied by comedians, 
 the Jew was silent, dumfounded, and would not utter a rational idea, fearing 
 it might be offensive to the Church or the State. Not entirely, however, were the 
 Jews silent. Even in Poland, where Rabbi Lip~nann had written his Nizza- 
 chon, a rational commentary on the Bible, against the accepted Christian and 
 Jewish exegesis, in grateful recognition of which he was burnt alive by the 
 holy men of the Church; even in Poland Isaac Troki wrote his Chizzak 
 Emunah in the same spirit as the Nizzachon, and Rabbi Lipman Heller 
 stood at the head of the Polish rabbis, although his commentaries to the Mish - 
 nah were more scientific than orthodox. Germany produced quite a num- 
 ber of reasoners and scientists. Spinoza wrote in Holland, and the Jewish 
 culture culminated in Italy, where the disciples of Maimonides and Abraham 
 Ibn Ezra were quite numerous, and figured as professors of universities, 
 teachers of cardinals and princes, and physicians of popes as well as of sul- 
 tans and emperors. The number of enlightened and progressive men like 
 Sepurno, Elias Levita, Azariah dei Rossi, Leon di Modena, the Del Medigos, 
 the historiographer Gans, and the reformatory, though anti-philosophical, 
 Rabbi Jacob Emden, was not very small. The masses of the Hebrew peo- 
 ple, living under continuous oppression and constant fear of the Church au- 
 thorities, remained orthodox, silent and exclusive. The humane and en- 
 lightened eighteenth century encouraged also the Jew and brought him 
 out of his dark retreats. The zephyr of spring moved the minds in the
 
 115 
 
 ghettoes, and men of distinction, of mind and learning ventured out into 
 broad daylight. Moses Mendelssohn was the representative man of the 
 age. That timid philosopher, the author of Phasdan and Morgenstunden, 
 the translator of the Pentateuch, Psalms and Ecclesiastes and commentator 
 of several books of the Bible, became a conductor of modern culture to his 
 people and a representative expounder of Judaism to his many Christian 
 friends and opponents. New forms and methods were developed among 
 the Jews, in Germany especially. The spirit of the Spanish school resur- 
 rected in Germany. The French Revolution, the succeeding wars, then the 
 reaction and the new despotism in Germany and Austria kept that spirit at 
 bay and smothered every reformatory movement. Then came the struggle 
 for emancipation and captivated the minds ; it retarded, but it could not 
 stop the law of evolution, which went on under the surface. It culminated 
 first in a new Jewish literature of history, criticism, theology and its 
 branches ; and then in a spirit of reformation, which found its expression 
 in a number of rabbinical conferences, in which the Spanish school, in con- 
 nection with German learning and culture, declared its triumphs over the 
 rabbinical and Kabbalistic orthodoxy. 
 
 So the newest phase of Judaism was begotten. It re-echoes in Italy, 
 France and England. It celebrates its triumphs in Hungary, Poland and 
 Russia. It was carried into the United States of America, where in the 
 short period of one generation it was transformed into American Judaism. 
 Nowhere in all Europe could that reformatory spirit manifest itself in its 
 full vigor. Old and stereotyped forms and institutions, the orthodoxy of 
 princes and priests, together with the intolerance of nations and the fanati- 
 cism of the masses, were and are now indestructible barriers, insurmount- 
 able obstacles. Emancipation and then the preservation of the recaptured 
 rights of man, together with the domineering materialism, atheism and 
 hatred against religion which characterized almost all European Democrats, 
 turned ever so many excellent minds from Judaism and checked the re- 
 formatory spirit. In this country, however, where the forms and institu- 
 tions of Judaism had to be newly established, perfect freedom reigned in 
 the government and people, and the number of sects is so large that the 
 mutual prejudices could be but very mild; here in this blessed country 
 that reformatory spirit which, for centuries, had been the undercurrent of 
 the apparently defunct and benumbed forms of Judaism, triumphed in prac- 
 tical institutions, new forms and methods, as it did nowhere in the world ; 
 and from here it reacts on Europe as do our political institutions. Amer- 
 ican Judaism is, in forms and methods, far ahead of the Jewish congrega- 
 tions in any and every other country, Germany not excepted. Practically 
 the spirit of the Spanish school resurrects in the American Judaism, with
 
 its love of freedom, its spirit of charity and benevolence, humanism and 
 fraternization, its patriotic principles and national attachment, its Minhag 
 America and its American spirit of progress and unification. Let those 
 Spanish Hidalgoes of the Jewish mind rise and see how they live anew in 
 American Judaism. 
 
 And yet what is the fundamental principle of all those changes in form 
 and method? It is in the first place the Sinaic revelation, the covenant of 
 God and Israel, with its eternal doctrines and laws, precepts and ordi- 
 nances, which man has not made and man can not change. Under all the 
 revolutions and changes of thirty-four centuries of history, this basis was 
 not changed, not touched even ; this standpoint was not affected by the 
 law of evolution. It was, is, and will remain forever the immovable cor- 
 ner-stone of Israel's and mankind's positive religion. Necessity, the pressure 
 of events, reduced it to Palestinean religion, Babylonian and Egyptian re- 
 ligion, Roman and German or Spanish religion, tribal religion, ghetto re- 
 ligion, rabbinical or Kabbalistic. But all these changed forms and methods 
 are the offspring of evolution and outer circumstances, the children of time 
 fluctuating arid transitory, and the fundamental principle of the Sinaic 
 revelation and the covenant remain unchanged forever. 
 
 And in the second place it is the principle of reform, progress, change of 
 forms and methods which underlies the whole process of Jewish history. 
 The mobility of stability is its chief characteristic. The immovable center 
 is the Sinaic revelation and the covenant. All from center to surface is 
 subject to perpetual metamorphosis. The sound and vigorous center im- 
 parts perpetual life and movement to all parts of that sphere, and compels 
 the perpetual changes of form and method, in order to remain in corre- 
 spondence with the surroundings of the outer world. 
 
 Proceed, go on, always onward and forward, benign spirit of progress and 
 advancement, with reason's aid, the advice of goodness, and with Heaven's 
 voice : " I, Jehovah, am thy Elohim." Go on and unite all good men in 
 peace and harmony, for the blessing and happiness of man, and to the 
 glory of God and His eternal word.
 
 XVIII. 
 THE CHRISTIANITY OF HISTORY. 
 
 It is not right, perhaps, that I write a lecture on the Christianity of his- 
 tory, as I do not comprehend and understand Christianity as a Christian 
 would ; and I know, on the other hand, that Christians like Hitzig, 
 Kuenen, Wellhausen, or also Millraan and that learned professor of Harvard 
 College, writing on the Judaism of history, make very considerable mis- 
 takes, partly by their ignorance of the Jewish literature and partly by the 
 misunderstanding of the spirit and essence of that literature and the people 
 that produced it. I will, therefore, be brief and cautious in my remarks on 
 this important subject. 
 
 It is admitted on all sides that Christianity in its primitive and original 
 form was a Jewish sect, and so remained for a very long time in the Orient, 
 so that the Romans for many years knew no difference between Jew and 
 Christian, although Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, declared the Law ab- 
 rogated. If this i.* so, it must also be true that primitive Christianity no 
 less than Judaism based itself upon the Sinaic revelation and adhered also 
 to the laws of Moses, which were read in the churches as well as the syna- 
 gogues, until the Emperor Hadrian prohibited this ancient practice. Then 
 the Gospel according to Mark was written to be read among the Nazarenes 
 of Jerusalem instead of the Law and the Prophets. But long after that the 
 Oriental Christians lived according to the laws of Moses, until at last they 
 were excommunicated by the Gentile Christians. Paul's protestations against 
 the law and circumcision were in nowise directed against the Sinaic revela- 
 tion and covenant, although he goes back to the Abrahamitic covenant ; for 
 he preached the same moral doctrine and the same God, who should be again 
 " all in all," when the Son will return the kingdom to the Father. He held 
 so firmly to the laws of the Decalogue that he commanded the adulterer 
 among his flock to be put to death; and claimed that the covenant had 
 been inherited by the Gentiles. The 'abolition of the law referred to the 
 political, civil, criminal, ceremonial or Levitical laws, all that concerned the 
 State, the temple, the altar, the sacrifices, the priesthood ; not to the moral 
 law and the religious doctrine. Thi^, I believe, is admitted by the orthodox 
 expounders of the New Testament. Hence it must also be admitted that the 
 Sinaic revelation and the covenant were the fundamental principle of prim-
 
 118 
 
 itive and original Christianity, and the protestations of its founders were 
 directed only against a portion of the laws and institutions of Moses and what 
 was based upon them by Sanhedrin, scribes and popular customs, observ- 
 ances and opinions. Therefore reformation in Christendom actually signi- 
 fies returning to the standpoint and basis of the Sinaic revelation and the 
 covenant for the entire human family. 
 
 The abrogation of those laws was necessary for the promulgation of Chris- 
 tianity. The political laws of the Jews with their theocratic and democratic 
 foundation, especially after the fall of Jerusalem, were an abomination to the 
 Romans and Greeks. The sacrificial polity was not only impracticable out- 
 side of Palestine, but it had been outlived, as is evident from Jewish written 
 sources. The Hebrews themselves had already established a new form of 
 worship in the numerous cities in Palestine, Egypt, Persia and elsewhere. 
 Christianity, in order to succeed among the Gentiles, had to appear among 
 them without those laws and circumcision, only with the Sinaic revelation 
 and the covenant as understood and expounded by the Prophets, and as ac- 
 cepted by those "devout Gentiles" of whom Paul speaks so often.* 
 
 Christianity, starting out without laws, made its Talmud entirely differ- 
 ent from that of the Jews, although it was developed by the same law of evo- 
 lution as Judaism was. It made, in course of time, a Talmud of Rome, a 
 Talmud of Constantinople, and at last a Talmud of Protestanism. With the 
 laws of Moses, also the freedom, equality and stern justice underlying them 
 were relinquished, abandoned to the so-called wordly rulers, which was a 
 great loss to humanity. The Church had nothing to do with the laws. It 
 dealt in doctrines which were crystallized into dogmas and creeds, in dis- 
 ciplines which were fixed and enforced, and in church property which was 
 accumulated and governed. Although the patristic writers of the Church, 
 whether dogmatic, homiletic, exegetic, legendary or epistolary, strictly ad- 
 hered to the rabbinical method, the Derashah, which means expounding 
 Scriptures without established rules of interpretation, to advance doctrines 
 and precepts deemed necessary or requisite for the instruction or edification 
 of the masses ; they did not discuss law or Halachah as the rabbis did ; 
 hence the Christian Talmud became dogmatic and purely speculative, under 
 the guidance of Greco-Alexandrian or Greco-Roman methods with some, 
 and without any logic or system with others. 
 
 The difficulties which they had to overcome were numerous. They had 
 inherited the Jewish and the Gentile Christianity, with the law and without 
 it, with Jewish opinions and Pagan fragments ; the Jewish Messiah and 
 
 *For a more extensive exposition of these points see the author's " Lectures on the 
 Origin of Christianity."
 
 - 119 
 
 second advent belief of the original Apostles, the Metathronic Son of God, 
 the end of the world, and the last judgment day at hand, in the teachings 
 of Paul, the Logos mystery and of the Alexandrian school in the Gospel ac- 
 cording to John, the Holy Ghost theories of Jewish mystics, and the plu- 
 rality of deities in the Heathen consciousness ; the different natures and 
 offices of their Messiah and the various accounts of his conception, birth, 
 genealogy, life, death, resurrection and ascension. All these difficulties 
 and contradictions they were called upon to overcome, harmonize and crys- 
 tallize into a dogmatic Christology, which certainly was no small piece of 
 work and no common incentive to the mind for the exercise of ingenuity and 
 reasoning powers, in dealing with abstract questions, and reducing a chain 
 of thoughts into the stereotyped words of a dogma 
 
 This form of mental labor was certainly beneficial. It made the Christian 
 teachers idealistic, while the Jewish rabbis remained realistic up to the 
 days of the Spanish school. Its nugatory influence was, that it absorbed 
 the mind by one field of human speculation to the detriment of all others. 
 Practical life with all its important questions were excluded from the stu- 
 dent's sphere. He was a theologian, and naturally attempted to make all 
 persons and things theological or useless. The mind concentrated on dog- 
 matic speculations, became one-sided, intolerant and fanatical, which 
 caused the endless feuds and quarrels in the Church; the persecu- 
 tion, oppression and frequent slaughter of so-called heretics, schismatics 
 and infidels ; and the relentless combats of priests, princes and nations on 
 account of dogmas, which one believed and the other denied. The large 
 masses of people unable to reason with the dogmatists, understood nothing 
 of the theological questions, remained ignorant and helpless tools in the 
 hands of the priests, who succeeded easily in making them believe any- 
 thing they pleased. The people remained as ignorant of the affairs of 
 the Church as they did of the affairs of the State. They were governed 
 soul and body. The reasoners, too, were gradually reduced to a method of 
 reasoning from imaginary premises without any reference to facts, phe- 
 nomena and realities, so that they became mere advocates of the domineering 
 system without the energy to rise above it and survey it from another 
 standpoint. 
 
 To this mental and spiritual state of affairs another factor must be added ; 
 this was the constantly growing wealth and power of the Church, its serv- 
 ants and devotees. This naturally gave rise to Church legislation by po- 
 tentates on the one hand, by Pope and Council, or also by inferior prelates 
 on the other, to establish and protect the Church, the orthodox dogmas and 
 fixed disciplines, the priesthood and the domains of the Church; a legisla- 
 tion which grew into the Canon Law, by which Christendom has been gov-
 
 120 
 
 erned and is governed to-day, with or without the consent of the nations or 
 the individuals thereof. This ecclesiastical power and dominion had cer- 
 tainly its beneficial influence. The Canon Law was by far better than none, 
 and there was none among the domineering ruffians of knights and chivalric 
 princes who despised knowledge as they did labor and the laborer, and rec- 
 ognized only the right of might. The ecclesiastical power counterpoised 
 the lawless power of despots for the benefit of the governed masses. It gave 
 to students a material aside from the dogmatic quibbling in which they were 
 ingulfed. Notwithstanding the horrible wrongs sanctioned or instigated 
 by Church legislation, the burning of infidels, witches and lunatics; the 
 persecution and oppression of Jews and Turks ; the absolution for rich 
 sinners and the slavery imposed upon the helpless multitude; notwith- 
 standing all that and much more, the Canon law was a holy thing, a piece 
 of divinity in the minds of the masses, the reasoner and the thoughtless, 
 priest or layman, exactly as the Talmud was to the Jew and the tradition 
 to the Mohammedan.* 
 
 This is the' organism which the law of evolution brought forth in the 
 Church. This is the variety of forms and methods which rose and disap- 
 peared or remained in Christendom. This is the material of which the 
 Talmud of Rome and the Talmud of Constantinople and St. Petersburg 
 are composed, with all the wisdom and follies, truth and fiction, kindness 
 and cruelty, justice and bloody wrongs, which they contain; all to estab- 
 lish a Christology which they might be pleased to call orthodox, a church 
 and priesthood to protect and promulgate that very Christology, a form of 
 worship with a form of domination. It was a colossal aparatus to lift a 
 fly, a furious Vesuvius to roast an egg, much ado about nothing. The 
 whole noise was about the different reports concerning Jews which had 
 reached the patristic writers, the clashing contradictions which that pro- 
 duced, and the quarrels of priests over it. The starting point, primitive 
 and original Christianity according to either Peter, Paul or John, was lost 
 sight of; the Sinaic revelation and the covenant were almost forgotten, and 
 the whole affair was forced upon another field, the field of Christology 
 " which thy fathers knew not." The revealed matter, that which is ac- 
 knowledged on all sides as revealed matter, was laid aside ; and the specula- 
 
 *In Austria and Germany the Talmud has lately been attacked quite severely by 
 Christian professors, and defended by the rabbis. But none of them has had the 
 moral courage to advance that there is certainly no absurdity in the Talmud which 
 is not duplicated in the dogmatic discussions, and no injustice which is not outdone 
 by some canon law of the Church, or some decree of a Council. And yet such is 
 the recorded fact.
 
 121 
 
 tion and legislation of priests was taken up in its stead. The servant occu- 
 pies the master's chair. 
 
 And now comes Protestanism. Huss protested. Luther, Melanchthon, 
 Calvin and Zwingly protested. Erasmus, of Amsterdam, Vander Houghton, 
 Henry VIIE.. of England, and Gustavus Adolphus. of Sweden, protested, 
 and they found numerous followers who declared that the old form of 
 Christianity had been broken, the scholastic methods had outlived their 
 days of usefulness. The men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began a 
 new chapter of history by the invention of typography, the revival of let- 
 ters, the establishment of commerce, the remodeling of state governments, 
 the cultivation of philosophy, the study of the classical remains of an- 
 tiquity. The minds were no longer ingulfed in dogmatic theology exclu- 
 sively ; it was no longer all-important. Other themes engaged the minds, 
 and a spirit of freedom appeared on the horizon of man which penetrated 
 into the churches and convents, rousing some monks, priests and scholi- 
 asts to recognize and do justice to that new spirit which traveled through 
 the nations of Western Europe. It is hard to decide whether those reformers 
 or their cotemporaries were unfit for a thorough reformation ; but it is cer- 
 tain that while they reformed disciplines and pretended to reject the whole 
 Talmud of Rome with all its traditions, dogmatism and canon law, they 
 advanced the old orthodoxy in a new form without any attempt to come 
 back to primitive and original Christianity. They not only retained the 
 whole burden of Christology as established by Popes and Councils, but 
 made it so much more oppressive to the mind, by denying the right of 
 reason and negativing the existence of free will altogether, making of the 
 Bible a new and infallible Pope, and of their Christology the indispensable 
 chariot in which to ride into Heaven. A new Talmud was gradually 
 evolved from the defunct remains of the old, the Talmud of Protestantism. 
 Those good men then certainly believed they had fixed and secured forever 
 their special form and method of religion, never to be disturbed again. 
 They forgot the law of evolution. They forgot that they disturbed one 
 system, and whatever disturbs can be disturbed. 
 
 In spite of Christian theology and churchcraft the European nations ad- 
 vanced from the darkness of the Middle Ages to the morning dawn of the 
 sixteenth century. ' So also, in spite of all the blunders made in the Ref- 
 ormation, the European nations advanced from the dawn in the sixteenth 
 century to the high noon of the nineteenth. Pressed onward by the 
 spread of .science, commerce, industry and enlightenment to the revolu- 
 tions of the eighteenth century in all provinces of human activity, Chris- 
 tianity against its will was also revolutionized. The old Christology of 
 supposed facts was changed into a speculative Christology, by men like
 
 122 
 
 Frederick Schleiermacher, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, the English theists, the 
 Saxon Unitarians of Transylvania, and a host of other men and societies, 
 who wanted to be Christians by name at least. For that speculative or 
 rational Christology means a negation of supposed facts, in place of which 
 the idea is set. They do not maintain apodictically that the alleged facts 
 are not true; they only consider them indifferent and superfluous. The 
 ideas which they represent are sufficient to constitute a satisfactory Christ- 
 ology ; anyhow they are amply sufficient to show why the Christian 
 world always believed those allegations to be historical facts and to confer 
 upon their churches, sects or societies the title of Christian. This is the 
 last phase of Christian reformation ; the next step beyond leads into the 
 Sinaic revelation and the covenant as the sole foundation of positive relig- 
 ion. 
 
 Those men, Schelling and Hegel included, make one great mistake, 
 which has the effect of keeping many in a vicious circle, of the same na- 
 ture precisely as that of the orthodox dogmatics, when they proved 
 their dogmas by some accidental statement in the New Testament or also 
 in the Old as understood by some prior dogmatists. Those modern doc- 
 tors who care not about facts, tell us the New Testament Scriptures 
 were a mere and imperfect beginning of Christianity, giving the impulse 
 to a new development, in which each succeeding stage is superior to the 
 preceding one, so that the modern Unitarian stands upon the top of the 
 ladder. Christianity in its historical development and progress of Christian 
 thought, has left its sects from every phase of development as a sort of 
 documentary history, which proves beyond a doubt that each succeeding 
 sect is more enlightened than the preceding. 
 
 It is not very likely that those very sects will admit this allegation. But 
 suppose this be admitted, it merely proves that Christian thinkers were and 
 are now engaged in undoing what their predecessors have built up. It 
 is a process of self-destruction, or, at least, of destroying all Christology. 
 Those modern gentlemen actually maintain that Christology based on fact 
 is no longer tenable, and they adopt instead the conglomeration of ideas, 
 which they call rational Christology. Why do they catch the shadows when 
 the substance is evaporated? Because, they say, the ChHstian mind which 
 historically developed those dogmas, must necessarily possess the ideas 
 which it incarnated in supposed facts ; therefore we must necessarily build 
 up a speculative Christology. But the Christian mind at no time dealt 
 with ideals, it received a number of traditions concerning the Messiah, his 
 natures, offices and teachings, verily believed to be facts without any refer- 
 ence to any idea. So the acts and lessons of the Apostles were again re- 
 ceived as facts and not as a presentation of ideas. All that Christian students
 
 123 
 
 did in this direction was to harmonize those contradictory traditions and 
 cast them into dogmas, which the populace believed and the philosophers 
 attempted to expound. But if those traditions are not facts, where is the 
 necessity of harmonizing them, hence where is the substance, the truth or 
 the necessity of that so-called rational Christology? 
 
 If they maintain that they must stop somewhere, at some standing-point 
 from which to develop a system of Christianity, therefore, they stop at the 
 ideas incorporated in the orthodox Christology, as the legacy of the past, 
 upon which the present state of the popular mind is based ; they tell the 
 truth, but must admit at the same time that the popular mind being taken 
 away from those facts to the ideas thereof, will necessarily be prepared to 
 drop the ideas as well as the facts, which will be the end of that so-called 
 rational Christology. What will remain then? Either the return into 
 the mediaeval dogmatic speculations in alleged facts, or a simple return to 
 the Sinaic revelation and the covenant, the standpoint upon which Jesus 
 and his Apostles stood together with the primitive Christians, or atheism 
 and immorality, if the philosophers do not succeed better in the future than 
 they did in the past by giving us a Living God and a living moral law, 
 living arid enlivening, convincing and assuring. The law of evolution can 
 make no positive religion. 
 
 If the last phases of Christian reformation offer correct material from 
 which to predict the future, we know exactly the creed of the future man. 
 In the past it was not the Talmud of the Jews nor the Talmud of 
 the Christians, nor the wrangling of the reformers against both of 
 them, nor any other phase, form or method which the law of evolution 
 produced, that advanced the human family from crude and childish 
 notions of God and His will to our present conceptions of both. It was 
 neither Rabbinism and Kabbalism nor the Christology of the orthodox 
 or the dissenters, all of which were mere means to lead man to God 
 and human duty, which civilized and humanized the masses. It was the 
 substance of the Sinaic revelation as the acknowledged law of God, and 
 the consciousness of His covenant of love with His children, which was 
 spread by these or those means ; it was that and nothing else which elevated 
 man to the dignity of a child of God, and pointed out for him the path 
 leading to the Father's house. This revelation and this covenant, spread 
 by those and other means, were the redeeming power in Christendom. The 
 means are the form. It is broken. The essence remains. On this plat- 
 form we meet again. " The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, and the 
 word of our God lasteth forever." 
 
 THE END.
 
 Copyright, 1883, LEO WISE & CO.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 NO OF LECTUKK. PAGE. 
 
 I. AGREEMENTS, 3 
 
 II. INSPIRATION, PROPHECY AND REVELATION, 10 
 
 III. PROPHECY, REVELATION AND THE BIBLE, 16 
 
 IV. THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES OF 
 REVELATION COMPARED, 23 
 
 V. THE LAWS OF MOSES AND THE LAWS OF PROGRESS, 28 
 VI. THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY AFTER REVELATION, 35 
 VII. SINAI AND CALVARY COMPARED FROM THE ETH- 
 ICAL STANDPOINT, 42 
 VIII. FREEDOM, THE POSTULATE OF ETHICS, 49 
 IX. PROVIDENCE AND THE DOGMA, 56 
 X. SIN AND ATONEMENT, 63 
 XI. IMMORTALITY AND SINAI, 70 
 XII. A RESUME OF THE BODY OF THE DOCTRINE, 77 
 
 XIII. PARADISE, HELL, SATAN, EVIL SPIRITS OR RECOM- 
 PENSE, 84 
 
 XIV. I. GIFTS OF GRACE, REDEMPTION AND SALVATION, 91 
 XV. II. GIFTS OF GRACE, REDEMPTION AND SALVA- 
 TION, 98 
 
 XVI. I. THE JUDAISM OF HISTORY, - 104 
 
 XVII. II. THE JUDAISM OF HISTORY, in 
 
 XVIII. THE CHRISTIANITY OF HISTORY, - 117
 
 I. 
 
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 History of the Hebrews' Second Commonwealth : 
 
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 any sacraments ; that he died to save the lives of his disciples ; 
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