HAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 
 
 EWISH VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ing a Lecture delivered 1886, at a Christian Literary 
 Society in London, under the Chairmanship of 
 Joseph Jacobs, M.A., Cambridge. 
 
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 Balliol College, Oxford. 
 
 Author of "The World and the Cloister," "Faith 
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 "WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 
 A JEWISH VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Being a Lecture delivered 1886, at a Christian Literary 
 
 Society in London, under the Chairmanship of 
 
 Joseph Jacobs, M.A., Cambridge. 
 
 OSWALD JOHN SIMON, 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford. 
 
 Author of " The World and the Cloister,'" " Faith 
 and Experience," d-c., dc. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
 London : 
 
 THE BIBLIOPHILE PRESS, 
 149, Edgware Road, W.
 
 TO 
 
 C. G. MONTEFIORE 
 
 WHOSE SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY ON THE 
 
 SYNOPTIC GOSPELS IS LARGELY IN ACCORD 
 
 WITH THE VIEWS OF THIS PAMPHLET. 
 
 WITH DEEP AFFECTION 
 
 O. J. S. 
 May, 1911. 
 
 20970T
 
 "WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 
 
 OB 
 
 A JEWISH VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 BY 
 
 OSWALD JOHN SIMON 
 (formerly of Balliol College, Oxford). 
 
 In politics it is not always easy to perceive the 
 exact cause of events, or the consequences of them. Few 
 politicians are gifted with that breadth of view which is 
 necessary to enable them to assign to their right causes 
 the incidents in political history. Difficult, however, as 
 this mental process is in the sphere of politics, it is more 
 difficult in the domain of Philosophy and Religion. In 
 the latter province of thought, greater prejudices impede 
 investigation, and prejudices of a kind more subtle and 
 deeply rooted than those which operate against true polit- 
 ical insight. It is sometimes part of a creed to believe 
 that a certain moral result was the issue of a given chain 
 of events. And it is often a condition of a religious com- 
 munion to deny to certain factors the place that might be 
 assigned to them in the history of civilization. Thus it 
 arises that two persons, of equal capacity and sincerity, 
 will select different reasons for the development of civili-
 
 6 
 
 zation, possibly the one insisting upon a circumstance as 
 a mainspring which the other would find it part of his 
 mental constitution to deny. This unfortunate condition 
 of things, in the relations of one religious system to 
 another, is pregnant with harm to the solution of problems 
 that most concern human progress, as well as to the 
 harmony of human intercourse. It is not uncommon, 
 when two persons of different religious traditions are con- 
 versing about the progress of human Society, for one to 
 say to the other, " of course we have such different stand- 
 points that it is impossible to proceed together beyond a 
 certain reach." The great advantage which men of 
 Science have over Moralists is that they start on their 
 journey of research without let or hindrance. Is it too 
 much to hope from the progress of culture that the time 
 is not distant when persons of totally opposite training in 
 religion may look into each other's experiences, with a 
 vision as clear and unshaded as that which leads the 
 student of natural science to discoveries which astonish 
 and delight mankind ? We might suppose an examina- 
 tion of this kind, conducted by a cultivated Bhuddist 
 and a well read Parsee, surveying together, not only the 
 antecedence of their own religious histories, but looking 
 beyond into the depth of European culture, with the will 
 and intention to find out what, in truth, are the principles 
 known to any section of mankind which have done most 
 for human good and which are, therefore, likely to accom- 
 plish the greatest happiness for the greatest number. For 
 purposes of illustration, it is invariably best to choose 
 examples nearest home. An Englishman, writing in his own 
 tongue, for readers of his own nationality, will best secure 
 his illustrations by pointing to cases that are familiar to 
 every educated Englishman. Few people, in this island
 
 of ours, profess to know very much about the ancient 
 and picturesque religions of Asia, although Professor Max 
 Miiller and Monier Williams have thrown much light 
 upon the subject ; perhaps there are not fifty men in any 
 English or Scotch University who could feel that they 
 were capable exponents of the Asiatic religions. 
 
 Whenever I employ the term Religion in the course 
 of this Lecture, I would wish my readers to understand the 
 exact meaning I intend it to convey, and in no instance to 
 confound it with theology or ecclesiasticism. I use the 
 word in a broad sense that may be understood by every 
 race and system of thought. I mean by it no creed, but 
 the simple idea, more or less developed in various systems ; 
 that there is a parental relation of the Supreme Being to 
 the human family. For my purpose I must regard re- 
 ligion as a single principle in human thought, a single 
 factor in human culture just like the words, logic, natural 
 science or mathematics, it will be the same in every tongue 
 and to every mind. As there is one logic, one mathe- 
 matics, etc., so there is, in the sense in which I shall refer 
 to it, one religion. Fully sensible of the multifarious forms 
 in which it is presented, and the apparently opposing evi- 
 dence on which it is said to rest ; I cannot conceive of a 
 plurality of religions, any more that I can suppose that 
 there are several logics. It is one thing by itself necessary 
 to the happiness of mankind, just as logic is another neces- 
 sary to the art of reasoning. These different factors were 
 suggested by different members of the human race ; and 
 particular groups of people seem to have had the special 
 charge alloted to them of teaching the world the one and 
 the other. Human development is gradual, and one set of 
 truths after another has slowly crept in upon human 
 thought. Many persons use words like these, with a dif-
 
 ferent meaning. Excellent people often say there is only 
 one religion ; by which they mean that their particular 
 theology is the only one that is true, or that it is the best, 
 and the terms theology and religion are inconveniently 
 confused. Seeing how common it is to say that, there is 
 only one religion ; and that the statement conveys exactly 
 what I do not mean when I say it, I have thought it 
 necessary to state briefly my own definition of the term. 
 If I allude to heathendom, I mean only such peoples who 
 have not yet perceived the parental relation of the Supreme 
 Being to the human family. But I wish to convey no 
 more the idea of opprobrium than I would if I alluded to 
 persons who were not yet acquainted with the principles of 
 logic. A religious person means one who, by some means 
 or other, is conscious of the parental relation of the Supreme 
 Being to mankind. The degrees of religion relate to the 
 measure of influence which that principle has obtained in 
 the particular case. The reason why 1 presume to describe 
 religion as the first principle in importance, in the structure 
 of civilization, is because it is only one which has for its 
 immediate logical outcome the doctrine of human brother- 
 hood. Now as the antithesis to civilization is human 
 discord, the chief test of a civilized commonwealth is the 
 harmony of the social relations. The world has so far 
 progressed in civilization as men and nations live in 
 harmony. Inasmuch as there is less strife in the year 1886 
 than in the years of previous epochs, we are more civilized 
 now than we were then. Moreover, in so far as there is, 
 at this moment, strife among nations, we are less civilized 
 than we may become. Every measure, therefore, which 
 secures the basis of liberty, and thus shatters the founda- 
 tions of enmity, increases civilization. 
 
 We all know what the world owes to those races
 
 9 
 
 who first taught logic, mathematics and art. We can 
 easily assign to them the place of honor in the history of 
 human intellect, but what place shall we give to those to 
 whom we owe this greatest of all factors in civilization ? 
 And what personality in particular stands out as having 
 contributed most to the setting of that corner-stone in 
 human welfare ? The most devout men of all nations 
 would naturally ascribe the blessings of the world to 
 Divine Providence, and Christian men, if they wanted a 
 name in particular, would mention the Founder of their 
 religion, who, they would say, was the human aspect of 
 the Divine. 
 
 Such answers would not satisfy the strict inquiry 
 which I have described, nor could they be valid, for in the 
 one case it would be no answer to the question of men 
 and race to mention God, and it would be no more correct 
 to mention another name, if that other name is understood 
 to be synonymous with the name of God. Besides, to 
 have a satisfactory answer, it is desirable that it shall be 
 one upon which there can be no difference of opinion ; no 
 name suggested by the bias of race or creed would 
 carry sufficient guarantee that it was the right one. Here 
 comes the difficulty of a man stepping out, for a moment, 
 from that cavern which, more or less, overshadows the 
 best intellects, even in the world of letters, and of looking 
 with an eye undimmed by prejudice or hereditary caste. 
 We all have our favourite poets, our favourite painters, 
 our greatest musicians and our ideal warriors. In one 
 room, half a dozen different men of genius will be pro- 
 nounced the greatest of all poets, the greatest of all 
 painters and composers, the king of warriors. So, in this 
 matter, a Bhuddist will name Bhudda ; a Parsee will say 
 Zoroaster; a Mahommedan will say Mahomet ; a Christian
 
 10 
 
 will say Jesus ; and a Jew will mention the author of the 
 Pentateuch. But what value can there be to those 
 answers ? One, or more than one of them, may be true, 
 but it is probable that in each case the name is suggested 
 by the traditions of the speaker. If they were perfectly 
 free, they might answer otherwise, but the Bhuddist 
 mentions his founder, because he was taught that he was 
 the only begotten of God. The Mahommedan mentions 
 Mahomet, because he has learnt that Mahomet was God's 
 chief prophet. The Christian mentions Jesus, because 
 his creed states that he was the only son of God, and the 
 Hebrew refers to Moses, because all his life he has heard 
 the words ' there was no prophet like unto Moses." The 
 difficulty of impartial criticism is further enhanced by the 
 fear in a man's soul of being falsely charged. If a 
 Bhuddist were to say Mahomet, or a Jew mentioned 
 Bhudda. and the Christian said Moses, it would be sup- 
 posed that they had changed their faiths, and their own 
 co-religionists might declare them, without further reason, 
 to be renegades and apostates. These are grave charges, 
 and very few intellects are so constituted as to be imper- 
 vious to a charge of that nature. Hence some defence, 
 must be given for the stereotyped replies, on the ground 
 that a man may, pardonably, fear to utter a conviction 
 which is calculated to attribute to him a conviction which 
 he does not hold. There can be little doubt that the 
 dread in men's minds of being misunderstood is so terrible 
 that they will be silent rather than risk exposure to the 
 charge of disloyalty and apostacy. If we can suppose the 
 phenomenon of an earnest Christian and a devout Jew 
 setting aside every trammel of hereditary preconception, 
 we might hear an impartial answer to the familiar question, 
 "What think ye of Christ ? " An answer that had no taint
 
 11 
 
 of bias, undergoing as the question ought, an examination 
 as a true man of science would conduct the operation of 
 an anatomical examination. An Englishman whose mind 
 is a blank in relation to Christian theology, but whose 
 experience and study have made him intimate with the 
 result of Christian teaching, in all its aspects what must 
 he think of Christ ? Maintaining that the chief factor in 
 civilization is the religious idea, that is, the parental 
 relation of the Supreme being to mankind, first and fore- 
 most he regards the sense of human brotherhood as the 
 highest aim for civilized men, because it signifies perfect 
 relations between man and man it implies the realization 
 of the best hopes of political progress, namely, liberty, 
 fraternity, and equality of opportunity ; it means the 
 effacement of that one dread enemy which has betrayed 
 our social institutions in every age ; human intolerance 
 he regards the recognition of this doctrine of human 
 brotherhood by mankind, as the consummation of all 
 that is best and greatest in history, and, therefore, any 
 name, which is more or less associated with that develop- 
 ment, is more or less -great, in proportion to the force of 
 its influence. 
 
 Now there are two tastes of human character which 
 may both arrive at the same result, but their difference lies 
 in the source of their action. Two men are pursuing a 
 course of life, equally noble and equally beneficial in effect, 
 but the latter proceeds from the influence of another, and 
 the former acts from abstract doctrine. This, perhaps, is 
 a fairly exact description of the ethical difference between 
 a good Jew and a good Christian. The Christian who is 
 highly gifted with moral perception and whose life is 
 blameless, owes his moral wealth and spiritual endowment 
 to the direct and continued influence of a certain person-
 
 12 
 
 ality without whom he would say that he could enjoy little 
 moral possession and no spiritual treasure. Now the 
 Jew whose moral constitution and spiritual training 
 produces the self-same conduct and results, goes through 
 life without a thought of any one of his side, or even 
 a hero of history, to direct him. Whatever is best and 
 purest in his composition is the direct and sole effect 
 of an abstract teaching, which he calls his religion. But 
 for the sparse population of professed Israelites on the face 
 of Europe, we might be induced to believe that the pheno- 
 menon of a completely religious life can only be the result 
 of a personal influence ; and we may still infer that so far 
 as Europe is concerned, barring the handful of Jewish 
 people who make the exception, the phenomenon of a 
 completely religious life does not exist, without the personal 
 influence for its cause. We know of no instance in 
 European Society of any group of men who exhibit a lofty 
 religious tone and who, at the same time, are not, in some 
 sense or another, the disciples of a great personal influence, 
 except the case of the people professing the Jewish religion. 
 For, if we examine the philosophy of such writers as are 
 known to hold themselves outside the Communion of 
 Christian churches, we still find in their writings and in 
 their conversations, some words which support the pro- 
 position that they are led in their moral endeavours by the 
 recollection and the force of some one personality. The 
 measure of moral and spiritual culture is only determined by 
 the extent to which that personal influence is paramount, 
 even with those whom Theologians call all kinds of names, 
 who profess no theology at all. Frequently I have heard 
 men,' in England and Germany, who consider themselves as 
 far removed from the creeds of any Christian church, as a 
 Bhuddist or Parsee, grasp the name of the one personality,
 
 18 
 
 whenever they were attempting to illustrate the best side 
 of human nature. Now, this extraordinary state of things, 
 that none but Jews are free from personal direction in 
 the matter of religion and morals, and that all Europeans 
 who are not Jews and who hold vastly different views of 
 life and philosophy, cling to the same influence, opens up 
 two interesting questions : first, as to that one personality 
 which, for so long and so profoundly holds this sway over 
 human thought. "What think ye of Christ?" and again, as 
 to the fact that only one group of people seem independent 
 of his influence in religion, namely, the Jews : they being 
 of the race and religion of that same personality. " What 
 think ye of Judaism ? " When I venture to say that it is 
 not possible to reply amply to the one question without 
 asking the other, I am sensible that the reader may im- 
 pulsively suspect that the writer of this Article, at least, is 
 not in that fortunate state of freedom from creed or race 
 influence to conduct the examination in the manner he 
 prescribed. But I may here submit that, difficult as it is 
 to secure a free critic, the difficulty is augmented by the 
 necessity that a person of the race and religion of Christ is 
 wanted to answer the question in all its breadth and signi- 
 ficance, because it is doubtful whether, in all Europe, 
 there is a thinker, not a Jew, who has at his command 
 those instruments of inquiry which are needful, who knows 
 from the interior experience the exact effect of a religion 
 which the misfortunes of two thousand years have rendered 
 the most exclusive, who can gain access to those avenues 
 of reflection, upon a topic which has been debated, in 
 closed doors and in a dead language, and from which the 
 eye of cultured Gentiles has been more or less blindfolded 
 since the gloomy days of Herod, and who, therefore, have 
 been unable to inspect the advance, the refinement, the
 
 14 
 
 growth of nineteen centuries, among a people so gifted 
 with the genius of religious perception. The claim of the 
 Hebrew race to take the first rank among the contributors 
 to human progress, is established by the fact that to them 
 it was pre-eminently given to teach mankind God, and 
 give morality to the world, inasmuch as they first learned 
 the doctrine of the parental relation of the Supreme Being 
 to mankind, and that their literature and their history have 
 placed that idea, above any other, and, moreover, that in 
 their own sons they have produced the most powerful 
 teachers of that doctrine, places beyond the province of 
 discussion the truth declared in the Pentateuch, " Ye shall 
 be unto Me a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation." 
 Ex. XIX., v. 6, or as expressed by the Second Isaiah, 
 " Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord." Isa. XLIIL, v. 10. 
 We may leave the subject of the position of the Jews in 
 relation to the world and pass on to consider the most re- 
 nowned product of their race and doctrine, and thus debate 
 the question, " "What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 In dealing with this name, I am deeply sensible of 
 the sacred ground on which I touch, and, therefore, of the 
 reverence and the delicacy which its treatment demands, 
 for the simple reason that I know full well that, to the 
 mass of my fellow-countrymen at least, that name holds a 
 place unique for its sanctity and isolated for its veneration. 
 Also because I am equally conscious that the exact point 
 of view from which I regard it differs from that which my 
 best friends hold, and differs in kind to their thinking, 
 even more vitally than it might appear to my own mind. 
 So far as it is impossible to cast off the influences of my 
 own antecedents and which, for the purpose of this paper, 
 it may be best that I cannot so I would venture to describe 
 the two positions in these words. In the one case, that of
 
 15 
 
 the vast Christian majority, the name stands forth as the 
 single truth, with all that is greatest and holiest. To 
 myself it presents itself as the one exponent of the Ancient 
 Faith, who, from circumstances which I am about to 
 explain, was the single Israelite who succeeded in delivering 
 to the world at large that old faith of which his race was 
 destined to be the missionaries. To Jews, who may differ 
 from these definitions I would say that our Ten Com- 
 mandments and our Psalms, which they all rejoice to see 
 occupy a prominent place in Christian profession, do so 
 only in consequence of their connection with the name of 
 Christ, and because he reiterated them. And to Christians 
 who take exception, I would reply that no Jew could 
 remain within the pale of the Jewish religion who, did 
 not admit that ' on these two great commandments hang 
 the Law and the Prophets." "Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment 
 and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself. On these two commandments hang the 
 Law and the Prophets." Matthew XIII., verses 37, 38, 
 39, 40. The rite of circumcision would not counteract the 
 disqualification to be of the Jewish religion for any born 
 Jew who denied that other definition of his old Faith, so con- 
 spicuously imported into Gentile teaching, when in answer 
 to the question, " What good thing shall I do, that I may 
 have eternal life." Jesus said, "if thou wilt enter into life, 
 keep the commandments." He said unto him, " which? " 
 Jesus said, " Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not 
 bear false witness. Honor thy father and thy mother, and 
 thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ' Matthew XIX, 
 v. 16, 17, 18 and 19. These several citations of the 20th
 
 16 
 
 Chap, of Exodus, the 19th Leviticus v. 18, and Deut. 6, v. 
 5, recalling, as they do, to the Israelite of all ages and of 
 every clime, the inmost sanctuary of his religion, words so 
 familiar to him that they have been incorporated into his 
 prayer-book and constitute, as it were, the very " canon " 
 of his public worship and of his daily and dying confession, 
 it must be to him the subject of solemn gratitude that, by 
 what means so ever, these words have at last found their 
 way and travelled outside the boundary of the synagogue 
 and after 18 centuries become the corner-stone of Western 
 civilization. The Jew, who does not recognize this, re- 
 nounces, whether he knows it or not, his personal identity 
 with the band of missionaries who carried the treasured 
 Ark through the wilderness, he repudiates the charge given 
 him through his ancestors, at the foot of Sinai, and misses 
 the whole scheme of his racial history and the true genius 
 of his Judaism.* 
 
 Here again I am confronted with two kinds of 
 antagonists, namely the Christian who renounces these 
 statements of what Christ taught, asserting that they do 
 not represent the completeness of Christianity, and the 
 Jew who might refuse to recognize the identity of the 
 teaching of Christ with the Jewish religion, contending 
 that Christianity contains much else which is positively 
 the denial of Judaism, and even hostile to it. It is un- 
 necessary to consider here other objections which issue 
 
 * " It is incumbent upon us throughout all generations, to consider, as if we, person- 
 ally, had gone forth fiom Egypt, as it is written, " And thou shall show thy son in that day, 
 saying, this is done, because of that which the Lord did for me, when I came forth from 
 Egpyt." Not only did the Supreme Being deliver our fathers but also us as it is written. 
 
 Thus, are we in duty bound to thank and praise Thee, O Lord our God, for having 
 performed to our fathers and to us, all these miracles. Thou hast brought us from slavery 
 to freedom, Thou hast changed our Sorrow into Joy, and our darkness into a great light. 
 We will therefore sing before Thee, Hallelujah ! 
 
 (Passover Service, 1st night.) 
 
 This has no other meaning to the Jews of the present day except as the Statement of 
 the Missionary character of their Race."
 
 17 
 
 from the conviction on the part of Jews, that the very 
 name, Christianity, represents and is the cause of 1800 
 years of persecutions, stakes and massacres, and is, even at 
 this very time, the actual tyrant of half the Jewish race. 
 Whilst understanding that attitude towards the subject ; 
 yet, for the purpose of a strictly philosophical inquiry, it is 
 imperative that we should separate the class of criticism 
 which is philosophical and calm, from that which is the 
 consequence of a righteous indignation, but which has 
 sometimes culminated in a passionate resentment. We 
 have, in such instances, the illustration of harm done to a 
 scientific investigation, by permitting it to be tampered 
 with by political and social estrangements, or by the in- 
 fluence of race, prejudice and ignorance. It is enough 
 then to dispose of the two classes of objections, without 
 considering others which dim the sight and mar the judg- 
 ment. 
 
 With regard then to the latter kind of antagonism, 
 we must give much the same answer, as we should, to the 
 former, and say that the history of the religion of Christ, 
 with all its consequent events and revolutions, compels the 
 conviction that a clear line of demarcation must be drawn 
 between, what we may be disposed to call, two Christian- 
 ities. In the face of statements from equally recognized 
 spokesmen of " Christianity " which, to one, who is not a 
 Christian, seem to convey the exact opposite of each other, 
 and to those who are Christians, do literally precipitate 
 open divergence and mutual protests, how is it possible to 
 resist the belief that much that has grown up since the 
 first century of the Christian era, and is taught in that 
 name, is not the same as that which is read in the Gospels, 
 nor, indeed, is it the natural consequence of that wondrous 
 life and personality which is still held to be the central
 
 18 
 
 figure, in both cases. When we read, on the one hand, 
 that the condition of eternal life is to keep the command- 
 ments and be charitable ; and on the other, we are told, 
 not in that volume, but in the volumes of ecclesiastical 
 superstructure, that mere morality will not get you to 
 heaven, but that the hope rests on quite other conditions, 
 that is mental assent to propositions which we do not even 
 read in the New Testament or the Old, but which, at most, 
 are interpretations of what is written there, there is no 
 escape from the conclusion that the teaching of the Gospel 
 is one thing, and the teaching of churches is another. I 
 do not dispute that the teaching of the churches profess, 
 and do recapitulate, something of the lesson of that great 
 life ; but, a comparison between the life itself, as it was 
 lived, and the words, as they were written, and the spec- 
 tacle of ecclesiastical assumption and Church canons, shows 
 a difference almost amounting to contradiction. It may 
 be in place to give some illustrations of that difference. 
 Now, in the matter of the immortality of the soul, which 
 is an axiom in the Jewish religion, an inseparable part of 
 the doctrine of the affinity between God and man, Genesis 
 I. v. 27., " So God created man in his own image," as 
 much assumed throughout the sacred writings as the very 
 existence of the Deity, which, be it remembered, was never 
 enunciated as a proposition in the Pentateuch, but always 
 assumed as the foundation of every other proposition, 
 Hence, " I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee 
 out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, thou 
 shalt have no other Gods before Me," Ex. XX. 2. 3. The 
 Jews have ever held the first of the Ten Commandments to 
 be the.declaration of the Providence of God, not the announce- 
 cement of His being and No. 2, is the prohibition of idolatry, 
 commencing with the words, "thou shalt have no other
 
 19 
 
 Gods before Me." Christianity has proclaimed the immor- 
 tality of the soul in a manner which, to those who are unac- 
 quainted with Judaism, appears to be a new revelation, and 
 all Christian teachers have used language respecting it, 
 which makes it appear as the crucial test of the Christian 
 religion. Yet, what are the conditions that guarantee 
 eternal bliss according to the churches, and what are they 
 according to the message of Jesus himself? The creeds 
 of the Latin and Greek Churches and the Thirty-nine 
 Articles of the modern English Church, and the preaching 
 of the three Priesthoods, substitute acquiescence with 
 certain dogmas, more or less metaphysical, for that simple 
 and sublime consideration which is gathered from the me- 
 morable parable, in the XXV. Chapter of Matthew, 
 evidently inspired by the Founder himself. Here we read 
 a minute description of perfect charity, holy unselfishness, 
 human brotherhood, large sympathy and boundless care 
 for others elevating the poorest and the greatest sufferers 
 into the highest region of moral worth, and placing thereon 
 a sanctity and a blessing which is to be the equivalent 
 of serving God, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
 least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me," 
 Matthew XXV., v. 40. And again, "Inasmuch as ye did 
 not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." 45. 
 And what was this doing? "I was an hungered and ye 
 gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was 
 a stranger and ye took me in, naked, and ye clothed me. 
 I was sick and ye visited me, I was in prison and ye came 
 unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, 
 Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee ? When 
 saw we thee a stranger and took thee in ? or naked, and 
 clothed thee, or when saw we thee sick or in prison and came 
 unto thee ? " Matthew XXV., 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39, and the
 
 20 
 
 King shall answer and say unto them, " Verily I say unto 
 you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least -of 
 these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." v. 40. Not one 
 word is found in the text about belief or observance, or con- 
 formity to ritual ordinance. It is the plain and majestic 
 description of a perfect social economy, based on the religion 
 of the parental relation of the Supreme Being to the human 
 family. 
 
 There is an utter incompatibility between this 
 Christianity and the Christianity which, age after age, 
 has burnt heretics and denounced nonconformists. There 
 is an incongruity between that divine philosophy and the 
 more recent growth of human pride and sacerdotal assump- 
 tion. The resemblance is as undiscernable as any affinity 
 which could be discovered between black and white. How 
 does that parable read to the Jew ? and how does it read 
 to the Christian of this century ? To the Christian it is 
 part of a grand revelation which is only unveiled when it 
 is thought fit to raise the curtain, or indeed, after un- 
 speakable mental struggle, the thinker has disclosed it 
 for himself. To the Jew it is the old familiar expression 
 which has rung in every note of his domestic life for 3000 
 years and more, and which is the very essence of his 
 traditional teaching and practice which is incorporated 
 even into the ceremonial part of his hereditary observance* 
 
 * " These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations which ye shall proclaim 
 in their seasons." Leviticus XXIII. v 4. " 1 hree times a year shall your males appear 
 before the Lord in the Feast of Unleavened Bread Feast of Pentecost, and Feast of 
 Tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty, every man shall give as 
 he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee." 
 L>eut. XVI, 16, 17. " Thou shall rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, thy son, daughter, 
 man-servant, maid-servant and the Levite and the stranger, and the fatherless, the widow 
 and the Levite because he hath no part with thee, and the stranger and the fatherless and 
 the widow which are within thy gates shall come and shall eat and shall be satisfied, that 
 the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest." Deut. 
 XIV. 29. " If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy 
 gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart nor 
 shut thine hand from thy poor brother. 
 
 Thou shalt not be grieved when thou givest. Thou shalt open thy hand wide unto thy 
 brother, and to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land." Deut. XV. 7, 11. This is the 
 portion of the Law read on the 8th day of Solemn Assembly in every Synagogue throughout 
 the world.
 
 21 
 
 " And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall 
 not vex him, but the stranger that dwelleth with you shall 
 be as one born among you and thou shalt love him as thy- 
 self." Leviticus XIX, 33, 34, and again, Isaiah LV. 1. 
 " Oh ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and 
 he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat, buy wine 
 and milk without money and without price. For mine 
 house shall be called a house of prayer for all people." 
 Whoever is acquainted with the poor of the Jewish com- 
 munity, will perceive that the self-denial and the giving of 
 alms is practised to an extent that is sometimes startling, 
 when we consider their worldly condition which is equiva- 
 lent only to a class of the general community, just one 
 stratum above the lowest, and they are people, who for the 
 most part are strictly "orthodox" in all outward obser- 
 vances and have never read the New Testament and know 
 nothing of Christ, except that he was an illustrious Jew, 
 and the founder of the Christian religion. There we see 
 precisely the kind of unselfishness and tender consideration 
 of others, without distinction of creed or race which in the 
 remarkable chapter of Matthew is declared to determine 
 eternal happiness. 
 
 The limit of space forbids an exhaustive comparison 
 between the words of Jesus which are found scattered in 
 fragments throughout each Gospel, and those of the 
 Hebrew prophets and the Rabbinical fathers. The only 
 purpose of such comparison would be to show the kind of 
 Israelite that Jesus was and the sort of influences which 
 moulded his character. Unlike many schools of Hebrew 
 thought, there was little attraction in hib mind in Rabbinical 
 subtleties, except in so far as they bore directly and prac- 
 tically upon the spiritual side of life. It was the higher 
 Judaism, in preference to legal traditions and outward
 
 22 
 
 observances and forms, with which his soul was saturated. 
 It was because he saw in that higher Judaism the one 
 religion for all men and because it presented to his view 
 no essential barrier that should rail it off from the gaze of 
 the outside world, that he was so well fitted to be the one 
 of his race and faith who should hold up, to the outer 
 world, those divine truths which made him a " light to the 
 Gentiles " and, at the same time, " the glory of his own 
 people Israel." (Nunc Dimitis) St. Luke. Can any 
 student wonder that such a figure as this, whose character 
 was of superb grandeur and ideal purity, whose work in 
 history has been so precious in itself and so immeasurable 
 in its consequences, should be misunderstood ? Aye ! mis- 
 understood by those who have professed to follow him 
 these 19 centuries, as well as by the ignorant mob who 
 filled the passes before Calvary, and that arrogant priest- 
 hood and Hebrew aristocracy he was there to reform. 
 Looking at his life, at a distance of all these centuries, 
 with the light of history turned upon him in all its blaze, 
 he is yet misjudged, in a thousand ways, by Jew and 
 Gentile alike. Successive generations may yet have to 
 pass before even cultured Europe can make a true estimate 
 of his life, or his worth. 
 
 Nineteen hundred years ago, there was a small nation, 
 having its own autonomy but subject to a powerful empire, 
 with instincts of pride, on the one hand, arising from the 
 consciousness of its innate, superiority over their pagan 
 rulers. Unconsciously, perhaps, that national pulse was 
 beating with emotion at its chequered career, seeing that 
 it was charged with the weightiest mission to men that 
 was ever a nation's lot, and yet falling short, from time to 
 time, of its divine charge, jealous of its hereditary treasures, 
 anxiously guarding the sacred trust and trembling before
 
 23 
 
 the incalculable foes which stood in its near future. De- 
 testing, from its very soul, the pagan idolatry around it, it 
 was jealous of its greatest luminaries. Like all other 
 histories, around its best th >ughts and highest gifts grew 
 the arrogance of human pride and sacerdotal assumption, 
 as well as its plague of class distinctions and exclusions. 
 And it was, at that time, filled with sects and controver- 
 sialists. The best of these was gifted with a leader who 
 embodied the highest spiritual genius of his race and 
 traditions, and the mast orthodox Jew may regard him as 
 the hero of his race. 
 
 Thrilled with enthusiasm for that one religious 
 thought, the parental relation of the Supreme Being to the 
 human family, seeing, as he did, the inevitable human 
 brotherhood as its outcome, he was impatient at the slow 
 progress of history and, in many cases, the deadness to the 
 actual truths of Judaism. The best thinkers of this en- 
 lightened age are often impatient from the same cause, 
 how much more so a genius who would have been foremost 
 in the ranks of men to-day, but whose career was set in 
 the world, 1900 years ago. We often say of a great man, 
 " he lives in advance of his time." It is not too much to 
 say of Jesus, that if he lived now, he would still be in 
 advance of the age, seeing how far from attainment is the 
 essence of his teaching and the mission of his life, among 
 those very nations whose political or social systems have 
 been Christian in name for a thousand years. And if he 
 could revisit the earth now, so far from unqualified satis- 
 faction at the progress of his works, carried on after him, in 
 his name, we can imagine his tearful disappointment and 
 the sorrow of his great soul, to observe that political liberty 
 is only a thing of yesterday, and that religious enmity is 
 still rampant in the most Christian countries of Europe. 
 He would find, indeed, among individuals, numerous dis-
 
 24 
 
 ciples after his own heart, but it is impossible to resist the 
 reflection that he would go to look for them first, in the 
 hospitals of our great cities and in the slums of our crowded 
 thoroughfares where, indeed, he might find many noble 
 women and Christian men, " going about doing good," as 
 he did ; but it is extremely doubtful whether it would occur 
 to him to include, in his round, to the Gilded Chamber, in 
 order to behold the successors of his apostles, He might 
 certainly find his flock in the excellent work of many a 
 well-ordered English diocese, but it would be rather at a 
 Young Men's Christian Association, than in the Episcopal 
 palace, and if he were told he could only find them in one 
 Church, he would look aghast and would not be persuaded 
 that they were not to be seen also in many a Gospel Hall 
 and Mission House. In remote villages, he would be 
 cheered to meet the toiler at the plough who, according to 
 the light that is in him, spends his weekly holiday in 
 seeking to spread as much truth as he knows. Painful as 
 it was to him, in Judea, to listen to the Rabbinical hair- 
 splitting and the controversies of the Pharisees, it is 
 probable he would stand to-day much more aghast if he 
 heard the language which one Christian uses of another ; 
 and he might be tempted to repeat "they cast out devils in 
 my name." (Mark and Luke.) Looking for the evidence 
 of the progress of that religion which he taught, is it likely 
 that he would be best pleased if he were shown as evidence 
 that, whereas when he died, there was no creed on record, 
 now there are three ; and that the latest development of 
 these documents extends to a parchment roll, so long, that 
 it contains no less than 39 Articles which very few people 
 are able to understand ? Looking upon Jesus with wrapt 
 admiration for the perfection of his moral power, the 
 breadth and tenderness of his human sympathy and the 
 genius of his spiritual nature and regarding him as dis-
 
 25 
 
 tinctly the greatest figure in human history, not because of 
 what the Churches say about him, but through what is 
 open to every candid reader, it is possible to imagine 
 something of the flash of just indignation and surprise that 
 would thrill his very being, if a Jew told him that he had 
 heard it preached in a Christian temple, " Hell is paved 
 with unbaptized infants," and " no unbaptized child can be 
 saved." If he heard of the eagerness with which many of 
 the poor rush with their infants to the font, through having 
 been told that the eternal peace of the helpless little one is 
 determined by this act, he would recollect his own tender 
 words which made no reference to fonts : " Suffer little 
 children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such 
 is the kingdom of Heaven." Matthew XIX., 14. 
 
 We can imagine the amazement with which he 
 would be told that one half of Christendom, at least, regard 
 the remote descendants of his own kinsmen, of the very 
 worst of whom he only said, " Father, forgive them for 
 they know not what they do," with a hatred and treat 
 with cruel bondage, for more bitter and actively wicked 
 than that most ignorant mob ever perpetrated against 
 himself, in the dark ages of Herod. If he were told that 
 the vast Christian Empire, on the East side of Europe, 
 oppressed and worried, with elaborate persecution, her 
 millions of Jewish subjects -that other Christian States, 
 in South Eastern Europe,* systematically violated treaties 
 and disregarded the example and remonstrance of her 
 better neighbours, in order to continue the most direful 
 nvatment of her 250,000 Jews who were good and faithful 
 citizens, and whose families for ages had been true to 
 the country of their birth, that intellectual protestant 
 Germany, indeed, the seat of "Christian" reform, made 
 a cowardly " raid on a handful of men, instigated by a 
 
 * Lately the Kingdom of Roumania.
 
 26 
 
 Court preacher and abetted by University professors." With 
 these facts before him, it is doubtful whether he would 
 pronounce all Europe, Christian, and whether the evidence 
 of great pageants and elaborate ceremonials, though offered 
 in his name, would influence his view " one tittle or one jot." 
 The question arises, how came it that, in spite of the pure 
 teaching of Christ, so much sin and misery should have 
 been offered to the world in his name ? The truthful answer 
 seems to be this The task of introducing, into pagan 
 societies, a religion which was eternal by reason of its 
 permanent efficacy ; Divine, on account of its intrinsic 
 value and universal because of its boundless applicability, 
 required states of some civilization to receive it. The very 
 race who originally owned it, had to pass through the long 
 training of a rigorous law, in order to be sufficiently dis- 
 ciplined to assimilate it, and the social soil into which, at 
 the time of Christ, it was about to be sown, was not merely 
 uncivilized, but it contained already, much that had to be up- 
 rooted, in order to make way for the higher truths. Idola- 
 try was deeply rooted in the Western world. Whatever 
 culture there was in Greece and Borne at that time, par- 
 took of the nature of those very subtleties of thought, which 
 were discordant with the divine simplicity of the Hebrew 
 Religion, a religion which appeared to be a miracle, because 
 of its very purity. Whatever thoughts had so far crept 
 in upon the human mind were all, more or less, mythical, 
 and not within the easy apprehension of a child ; though 
 they possessed many poetic features. But the great boon 
 of Judaism was that it set forth the truth of the Divine Being 
 which, if philosophers tripped over, a child could under- 
 stand. It was necessary for the growth of human brother- 
 hood, to have one religion which, unlike Greek mythology 
 and Egyptian idolatry, presented itself in an aspect which 
 all nations could ultimately assimilate. The author or
 
 27 
 
 authors of the Pentateuch had the same kind of difficulty 
 in their day, that Christ had in his. He, however, adopted 
 a different plan. Instead of suddenly setting forth a code 
 of religion and morals which was far in advance of the 
 mental culture of those whom it was intended to be the 
 depositories of the new religion, he made no social revolution 
 whatever ; he took into his system the social institutions of 
 the age, and thus we find, in the Levitical Law, what some 
 people consider a divine sanction to the barbarous rites of 
 that ancient sacrifice of blood, but which, in reality, it was 
 only an appropriation for higher aims Hence Moses left it 
 to subsequent generations to emancipate Israel and mankind 
 under the training of his higher religion, from the practice 
 of those sacrificial observances. History has proved the 
 expediency of the method, because the Jews have long 
 since outgrown the barbarities of thinking they could 
 please God by slaying cattle. Associating those rites with 
 the permanent truth, that which is permanent remains, 
 and the rites which were temporary have passed away and 
 left no trace behind them, on the Jewish mind. The Jewish 
 religion was. therefore, the direct means of elevation 
 above the superstition of sanguinary sacrifice. The pro- 
 cess being gradual, the etfacement is lasting. So to-day, 
 the mind of a Jew is as free from the thought of sacrificial 
 rite, as if such rites had never entered into the system of 
 the past, and he is left in a frame of mind which regards 
 religion, entirely and only, upon its spiritual and its ethical 
 basis. The nations who first became Christian had to pass 
 through the same process of social regeneration which the 
 Jews had undergone, but as they started 2000 years later, 
 they are not yet rid of their crudities or superstitions or 
 errors. However they have the advantage of living in later 
 times and, therefore, the sacrificial idea does not take the 
 grosser form which is described in Leviticus arid by Homer.
 
 28 
 
 It assumes the more refined garb of a metaphysical dogma. 
 This is how we can account for the fact that so many 
 Christians, even in our own day, find it difficult to dissociate 
 the idea of religion from the thought of a sacrifice. It is 
 often curious to a Jew of modern times, to be asked, by an 
 apparently educated Christian, with eager interest, some 
 question about a lamb on the first night of the Passover. I 
 have frequently experienced a strange interest in observing 
 the astonishment it excites, when I inform my questioner 
 that, for nearly 2000 years, such a phenomenon as killing a 
 lamb, or having any notion of blood, in connection with re- 
 ligious worship, has been unknown among Jews ; and that 
 the tiny lamb bone, burnt in the fire and laid on a plate on 
 the first night of Passover, is a mere historic memento and 
 has no theological significance whatsoever. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that just as progress 
 among the Jews has delivered them from some extraordinary 
 superstitions, so, among Christians, the day of sacrifices is 
 just waning. We find, indeed, that now the most advanced 
 Christians are already free from that thought. The Broad 
 Church movement and Christian Unitarianism appear to 
 be a progressive development from the Reformation of the 
 16th Century, just as that was an advance on the earlier 
 expressions of Christian theology. In the world of Letters, 
 it is now an everyday occurrence to come in contact with 
 persons of Christian birth, whose position in regard to Christ 
 is, for all intents and purposes identical with that which I 
 have ventured to indicate in this pamphlet. 
 
 Thus we may account for one of the two differences 
 between the Church and the Synagogue as they appear to- 
 day. The Church binds up, with the religion of Christ, 
 the two doctrines of a Sacrifice, and the Fall of Man. In 
 the Synagogue, those ideas have no place, therefore, it is 
 the ethical religion of Christ alone which is in common
 
 29 
 
 between the orthodox Christian and the orthodox Jew. The 
 second, i.e , the Fall of Man, or as it is called, the dogma 
 of orignal sin, is of more vital difference than the former, 
 because it must be admitted that, free as the Jew, for many 
 centuries, has been from the notion of sacrificial rite, the 
 idea did once have a place in Jewish theology, but there 
 is no page in Jewish history, nor any word, escaped from 
 the lips of a Hebrew theologian, to indicate the dogma of 
 orignal sin. The story, in the book of Geneses, of Adam's 
 disobedience, has never produced, upon the Jewish mind, 
 any impression of significance (historical or otherwise) be- 
 yond the simple lesson of obedience, as taught to children. 
 That distinguished contemporary of Spinoza, the famous 
 Rabbi, Isaac Orobio De Castro of Amsterdam, wrote the 
 most powerful denunciation of that doctrine, in his Disserta- 
 tion on the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah. And he stakes 
 the whole issue between Christianity and Judaism upon 
 the one Christian hypothesis of the hereditary sin of Adam. 
 Most of the Rabbins seem to have disclaimed to treat the 
 subject of original sin, so remote has it ever been from the 
 Hebrew imagination. And, with all the learned commen- 
 taries, upon the text of Scripture which crowd Hebrew 
 libraries in thousands of volumes, not one of them has in- 
 terpreted a single passage in the Bible in a way to admit 
 the idea, even as an hypothetical argument. One of the 
 hardest problems for historical criticism is to account for 
 the thought having entered at all into Christendom. One 
 would have supposed that even those who believe in the 
 verbal inspiration of the Scriptures would find it an im- 
 possibility to formulate the dogma on scriptural authority, 
 considering that the flood is said to have distroyed all tne 
 wicked, and that all nations are descended from the three 
 pure sons of one just man (Noah). Indeed, the sentence 
 upon Adam did not embody a clause about hereditary
 
 3-2 
 
 already solved and how little remains open ? 
 
 In conclusion, slow as the search may be, the circum- 
 stance that it is possible for Jew and Christian to hold 
 the same view about Christ and about religion, shows the 
 unity of the religious idea, and when all the philosophers 
 will combine to seek for an agreement about that one 
 principle the parental relation of the Supreme Being 
 to the human family, it is certain that they will find it. 
 We shall then have a common religion, attended by the 
 infinite satisfaction that the huge and intricate struggle of 
 the ages has taken place with the purpose of disentangling 
 the simplest thread of human progress and the highest guar- 
 antee of 'civilization.' For it is evident that when that 
 one great principle which I call religion is fully understood, 
 it will work the most beneficial revolution that we have ever 
 had. To philosophy, it will give a patent key, and to poli- 
 tics, it will inspire the highest motive. That statesman who 
 works after the teaching of Christ will pursue a policy which 
 will place patriotism and the rights of independent States 
 in their proper relation to each other. In so far as we ob- 
 serve that such a policy has been the governing principle 
 of a politician, he is entitled to be considered a Christian 
 statesman. That party in the State which gives more 
 pre-eminence to the common rights of men and works 
 hardest for the cause of human liberty, is the party which 
 must command itself to the best Christian. The country 
 which, on the whole, offers the best securities for free insti- 
 tutions and the surest guarantee for the liberty of men, is 
 the most Christian country. So that, with this practical 
 view of the character of Christ, we can only consent to use 
 the word Christian as an adjective when it can justly des- 
 cribe a nation, a statesman, a policy, a community, or a 
 
 private citizen. 
 
 OSWALD JOHN SIMON, 
 
 London, 1886.
 
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