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 Jewish publications. 1. 
 
 CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S 
 NOUGHTS ON THE HEALING 
 OF A DISASTROUS SCHISM 
 
 iPER READ AT THE SCHECHTER SOCIETY, CAMBRIDGE, 
 FEBRUARY 19, 1909 
 
 BY 
 REV. G. A. JOHNSTON ROSS, M.A. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1909 
 
 Copies, price Sixpence net, may be obtained of Mr E. Levine* 
 
 College
 
 A CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S THOUGHTS 
 
 ON THE HEALING OF A DISASTROUS 
 
 SCHISM
 
 A CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE HEALING 
 
 OF A DISASTROUS SCHISM 
 
 PAPER READ AT THE SCHECHTER SOCIETY, CAMBRIDGE, 
 FEBRUARY 19, 1909 
 
 BY 
 THE REV. G. A. JOHNSTON ROSS, M.A. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1909
 
 A CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S THOUGHTS ON 
 
 THE HEALING OF A DISASTROUS 
 
 SCHISM. 
 
 I am grateful beyond all words, for the kindness of your 
 invitation to come here to address you, and for the generous 
 confidence which has given me carte blanche as to what I am 
 to say. 
 
 Will you believe at once that it is my honest aim to prove 
 worthy of that generous confidence, at least by refraining from 
 saying any single word that could grieve or hurt anyone here? 
 I should be fortunate indeed if in this matter I could come 
 within measurable distance of the brilliant success of one of 
 your members, who not long ago spoke to the undergraduates' 
 society connected with my own Church, giving "a young Jew's 
 impression of Jesus" without uttering a single word which 
 the most sensitive Jew could construe as disloyalty to Judaism 
 or the most sensitive Christian regard as irreverent. I cannot 
 hope fora like success to-night, and I ask your indulgence in 
 advance for any discourtesy which may inadvertently suggest 
 itself in what I say. 
 
 For part of the pathos and difficulty of the situation to-day 
 as between Jew and Christian is just that we know one another 
 too little, know, I mean, too little of one another's thoughts. 
 It is a life-work for either to succeed in understanding the 
 other. I have myself been unable to make Judaism the 
 subject of careful study : I come to you to-night with little 
 more equipment for speaking of the disastrous schism between 
 Jew and Gentile than just this: that my heart aches, as a 
 religious man, because of this schism. I feel that my brethren 
 of Israel have something to give the world in the way of 
 religion which I as a Gentile cannot give: that human 
 progress is being hindered by our alienation. And I think 
 this ache for reunion is a terrestrial form of a craving at 
 the heart of the living God.
 
 6 
 
 I. I begin then with a confession of that attitude of 
 mind to which one is shut up, as I think, by the results in 
 many departments of knowledge to-day : the attitude of 
 conviction that Humanity is one, although a unity manifold 
 in its discreteness and diversity. Many of you know much 
 better than I how the study of natural science, of biology, 
 of ethnology, of anthropology, of history, has driven men to 
 the conviction of the unity behind all the various forms of 
 life, and specifically of human life. I am not sure that the 
 significance of the interlacing of the various forms of life and 
 the reality of their underlying unity is not the greatest truth 
 which God has impressed on men during the last fifty years. 
 I said this unity is felt to be manifold. It is true, there 
 never has been a time in the history of the world when the 
 spirit of nationality has been more marked in its activity. 
 "The history of the modern world," says Dr Edward Caird, 
 " has been the history of the growth of independent nations, 
 each with its separate characteristics and its separate province 
 of activity, each maintaining itself and pursuing its interests 
 sometimes in cooperation with, sometimes in opposition to 
 others." There is only one adjective in that sentence to 
 which a fastidious critic might take exception. It is the 
 word "independent." For although this differentiation of 
 characteristics and of function among the races and nations 
 of our time has become one of the most clearly defined and 
 dominant ideas of the period, certainly no less marked has 
 been the growing recognition of the fact that races and 
 nationalities are not " independent " of one another, that the 
 world is (as Mr Bryce has been reminding us) "already to 
 all intents and purposes industrially and economically one" : 
 and the separate mission or function of each nationality 
 must be regarded as contributing to what Dr Westcott was 
 so fond of calling " the fulness of human life, the enrichment 
 of that wonderful manifold unity which we call the life of 
 humanity." 
 
 We must think of the race, then, as on the surface and 
 for disciplinary purposes divided, but as fundamentally and 
 ideally and in the eyes of God one.
 
 II. Now this oneness of the race is ultimately oneness 
 in God, the source and sustenance of its life. There is a 
 close correlation between the ideas of the oneness of the race 
 and the unity of God. " Without a belief in the oneness of 
 humanity," said Mazzini, "religion is impossible": it is equally 
 true that without religion, without monotheism, the race will 
 never effectively realize the fact and significance of its own 
 unity. That means that monotheism must be the final 
 religion of men, if we believe that man is progressing toward 
 a realized unity, and the ultimate religious debate must be 
 (as of course at bottom it has always been) solely as to what 
 kind of God it is who reigns. 
 
 These truths are, in the main, of modern recognition. In 
 ancient times the idea of a humanity so united had scarcely 
 dawned upon the human mind, I mean apart from the 
 miraculous prevision of the Hebrew prophets. It is true 
 that a Stoic writer before the beginning of the Christian 
 Era recorded his dream of a time when " the world would 
 become one harmonious flock feeding upon one common 
 law": but the idea remained a philosopher's dream, and 
 there is no evidence that it contained within itself any 
 recognition of the rights of individual or of separate nation- 
 alities regarded as individuals. And in one writer, Celsus, 
 the prevailing view is given with engaging frankness. " If 
 anyone supposes," he says, " that it is possible that the 
 inhabitants of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and 
 barbarians should agree to follow one law he is hopelessly 
 ignorant. Each nation," he says elsewhere, "observes its 
 national rites wherever they may happen to be. And this is 
 advantageous, not only in so far as different people have 
 conceived the idea of different institutions and men ought 
 to keep what has been ratified for common use: but also, 
 because in all probability, the different parts of the earth 
 were originally assigned to different presiding powers, and 
 distributed according to certain sovereignties and are so 
 administered." That passage is particularly interesting as 
 shewing how inaccessible to the ancient mind was the idea 
 of wide difference of function as contributing to an underlying
 
 8 
 
 unity ; and also as shewing how the mind was unable to get 
 further back than divided sovereignties, that is not only 
 human but divine. The whole point of view is a confirma- 
 tion of the truth that there is a close correlation between the 
 unity of humanity and monotheism. 
 
 Even where one God alone was worshipped the implicate 
 of the recognition of His Aloneness in the unity of the race 
 was over wide areas not recognized, and to this day is of 
 course very widely ignored. 
 
 I suppose that scholars are agreed that both in what are 
 called Semitic and Aryan areas this " Henotheism " as it is 
 called obtained. The illogicality of the position, the un- 
 reasonableness of the idea, was part of the burden of the 
 great Hebrew prophets in the eighth century before the 
 Christian Era, when the world power of Assyria became a 
 reality to Hebrew politics and religion. These inspired men 
 knew that a great moral choice lay before Israel, when that 
 vast heathen area came into view. Was it or was it not to 
 be claimed as God's area ? If it were tacitly excluded from 
 the field of His interests and activities, if Assyria were not 
 (as Isaiah said) " the work of His hands " then monotheism 
 was menaced : the Deity, the Lord who made the seven stars 
 and Orion, was made to shrink to a Palestinian god, i.e. to the 
 dimensions of a pagan deity. For the very idea of God is not 
 complete without the correlated idea of the area He controls. 
 If that area is circumscribed so is He : monotheism is at 
 least otiose and ineffective unless the area over which God is 
 thought of as presiding cover the whole universe, and the life 
 upon it be regarded as His and as somehow a unity in Him. 
 
 I cannot but believe that one of the reasons why God 
 is making the world to shrink as He is doing to-day, and 
 causing the interdependence of its various parts to occupy 
 so embarrassing a prominence in men's minds is, that He 
 desires to put an end to this illogical position, to shew men 
 that a divided race means for all who acquiesce in it a local 
 departmental tribal God, and to release for all men, through 
 the frank acceptance of their unity, the full forces of a 
 beneficent monotheism.
 
 III. Now Judaism is historically the guardian and 
 steward of the truth of the sacred unity of God. I put 
 out of mind for the moment both the oriental faiths and 
 that amazing amalgam of truth and error, Islam. The 
 headwaters of a monotheism ministering truly to human 
 progress are in Judaism (should I rather say Mosaism ?) 
 and Judaism alone. It may surely be now set down as 
 something beyond contradiction that the world will never 
 accept any conception of God except one which proceeds 
 along the lines drawn out (for example) in the preface to 
 and the first four commandments of the Decalogue, where 
 God is set forth as the providential deliverer from ill, as the 
 Alone, as pure spirit inexpressible and indefinable by human 
 effort, as holy, claiming man's reverence in utter truthfulness 
 and in detachment of spirit, or as in the later prophets 
 whose sublime variations on the central theme that the 
 Lord of conscience is the same with the Master of Nature 
 and the Ruler of History constitute so marvellous a religious 
 gift to mankind. It is Judaic monotheism alone that has 
 shewed a capacity for expansion. "In spite of all impedi- 
 ments the knowledge of God given to Israel moved steadily 
 forward " towards emancipation from national restrictions : 
 and to-day it is Judaic monotheism that is leading the 
 progress of mankind. It is in it alone that lies the secret 
 of mastery over the growing complexity of life. 
 
 But all this means that it would be fatal to the work 
 which Judaic monotheism has to do if it were found allying 
 itself with any practical acquiescence in a schism in humanity ; 
 for then indeed it would go halting and impotent. I am not 
 sure that there is not for monotheism to-day in this matter 
 as great and crucial a crisis as that which confronted Israel 
 in the days of Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah. 
 
 IV. If this then is the position of Judaism to-day, what 
 is to be said of that other great religious force which is at 
 the van of human progress, called Christianity ? 
 
 Now Christianity is not a New Testament word : and I 
 as a minister of the New Testament hold no brief for a
 
 10 
 
 something in which there is room not only for sainthood but 
 for devilry. I do not in the least know what that word 
 Christianity connotes in your minds ; for purposes of a con- 
 ference of this sort it is not merely a useless symbol, the 
 use of it is the direct and inevitable minister of misunder- 
 standing. 
 
 Suppose for instance that I claim that Christianity is 
 also like Judaism a guardian and trustee of monotheism, 
 you are rightly shocked. You confront me with the ap- 
 palling record of hagiolatry, Mariolatry, idolatry which 
 Christianity contains : you go on to say that there has been 
 a cultus not only of Mary but of Jesus which has been a 
 disintegrant of monotheism, a blasphemous invasion of the 
 sacred unity. And I not only do not deny it, but I view the 
 fact with an indignation and a poignancy of regret which I 
 think scarcely differs from the emotion in your own hearts. 
 
 And yet, I am sure that your historical studies and the 
 detachment of your judgment, enable you to see that this is 
 not the last word to be said about the contribution of the 
 person and work of Jesus to the life of man. Let us set 
 aside all this historic overgrowth, some of it slimy with the 
 foulness of an unwashed but hastily baptized paganism, and 
 go back to the work of the Israelite Jesus. 
 
 What Jesus taught was the monotheistic religion of 
 His fathers, with emphases of His own which it may be 
 had been forgotten. The teaching of the prophets on the 
 Righteousness of Jehovah and on His exclusive claim to 
 human homage He underscored: and He laid special em- 
 phasis on grace, on the Divine love, standing in this matter 
 (as it has often seemed to me) in very direct succession to 
 that wonderful preacher on the text that " God is love," the 
 prophet Hosea. Arising out of His emphasis on the Divine 
 love came a further emphasis on what is now so often called 
 the immanence of God : on the truth which is the comple- 
 ment of the message of Isaiah, of God's exalted majesty 
 namely that, though Heaven is His throne and the earth 
 His footstool, yet He will look toward the man of a poor 
 and contrite spirit trembling at His word.
 
 11 
 
 All this Jesus taught, and emphasized in His own person: 
 and I find among the records of those who knew Him best, 
 both in the first century and in the nineteenth and twentieth, 
 not the remotest trace of a breach upon the sacred unity of 
 God, but rather a religion which intensified the "zeal of God" 
 which has been the historic gift of Israel.... If I had time and 
 knowledge, I would fain have tried to shew you how the 
 message of Jesus to the world became (especially through its 
 exploitation by Greek speculation) caricatured and made the 
 propagator of polytheism and of racial hate : of a divided 
 God, a Godhead divided up as Olympus was among persons 
 ethically contrasted, and of the conception of a race divided 
 into covenanted and unco venan ted, privileged and unprivileged. 
 But I pass over that, for which were I sponsor or to which did 
 I serve myself heir, I could only appear here clothed with 
 inexpressible shame: and I return to a simple testimony that 
 the message of Jesus is itself monotheistic, and that so far as 
 His message has ministered to human progress, stimulating 
 scientific enquiry, and the conquest of nature, it has been by 
 its emphasis on the enclosure of all life within the domain of 
 one regnant mind, by saying in fact that God is love, and 
 Law is the way He loves us. 
 
 V. Now, if Judaism and the message of Jesus possess 
 this together, the treasure of monotheism in a form which 
 has ministered to human progress, ought there not to be 
 now (as happily we are beginning to see) some friendly and 
 mutually solicitous regard passing between these co-trustees 
 of the Divine grace? 
 
 With polytheism or whatever makes for the upbreak and 
 degradation of the Sacred Unity, Judaism can have nothing 
 to do ; and believe me the true heart of Christian aspiration 
 can have as little to do. But on the basis of a common 
 gratitude for the gift of monotheism I believe that we are 
 advancing toward a common conception of God : and that 
 ultimately we shall draw near to one another on the things 
 that constitute a basis for theology, a common agreement as 
 to the meaning of the phrases " moral order " and " moral
 
 12 
 
 universe," and therefore as to the true bases of worship and 
 reconciliation with the Supreme. As I look round upon the 
 world to-day, the hope that the religion of diverse races and 
 nationalities shall ever be cast into the same mould in thought 
 and dogmatic system seems to me ridiculous : but it does not 
 seem to me at all so absurd to look for a general agreement 
 in the conception of God, and in the ideal of character and 
 life. "The end of the commandment is Love": the goal of 
 the religious history of man is his realizing one disposition, 
 attitude to and outlook upon life, and this will come through 
 a common understanding as to the disposition and attitude 
 to man of the heart of God. 
 
 And to this end I cannot imagine either Judaism or 
 Christianity (I would rather call the latter Jesuism) failing 
 to contribute: Judaism, because Hebrews still have that 
 "zeal of God" that genius for religion which marks them 
 as the Messianic nation : and Christians because monotheism 
 with the emphases of Jesus is in them as a fire in their bones, 
 and they must proclaim it. I plead with my Jewish friends 
 to have patience with the missionary spirit among Christian 
 men even when it is directed in utterly mistaken ways against 
 the loyal followers of their own faith. You cannot know the 
 pain and distress that are at the heart of many devout and 
 progressive Christian thinkers because of the disastrous 
 methods and practices of many types of Christian con- 
 versionism, nor the shame that these practices cause us. 
 The proselytising spirit always dogs the steps of the 
 missionary spirit : and the desire to win a man over to one's 
 own community (this ministry to the self love that always 
 enters into a man's relation to his own community) follows 
 like a shadow the noble desire to mediate to him the name 
 and power of God. Christian missionaries have gone forth 
 in their thousands, this noble desire overlaid by less noble 
 aims, and by diverse superstitions, fanaticisms and prejudices. 
 But it is ours to-day to disentangle from all this complex 
 of belief and prejudice and conviction, the honest desire to 
 mediate and share the blessings of a Divine message: with 
 the history of that desire the greatest names both in Israel
 
 13 
 
 and in Christendom are bound up. An enormous amount 
 of work has yet to be done before the two groups of God- 
 driven men join their forces for the salvation of the world : 
 but at least the time should be going past when we despair 
 of a common understanding. You all remember Israel 
 ZangwilFs pathetic sonnet of the Meeting of Moses and 
 Jesus. 
 
 MOSES AND JESUS. 
 
 In dream I saw two Jews that met by chance, 
 One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded 
 With living light of love around his head, 
 The other young, with sweet seraphic glance. 
 Around went on the Town's satanic dance 
 Hunger a-piping while at heart he bled. 
 " Shalom Aleichem ! " mournfully each said 
 Nor eyed the other straight but looked askance. 
 
 Sudden from Church outrolled an organ hymn, 
 From Synagogue a loudly chanted air, 
 Each with its Prophet's high acclaim instinct. 
 Then for the first time met their eyes, swift-linked 
 In one strange, silent, piteous gaze, and dim 
 With bitter tears of agonised despair. 
 
 Need its pessimism always be justified? I cannot believe 
 it. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Only 
 the fringe of the powers that are latent in monotheism has 
 as yet been released : and when the patience of scientific 
 investigations into the origins of religion has had its perfect 
 work, and the religious experiences of mankind have been 
 more completely collated and studied, and when we have 
 learned to know one another better, I believe that out of the 
 unity of conviction then reached there will be generated 
 a fire of missionary zeal, cleansed of the mephitic elements 
 of proselytism, denationalization and the manufacture of the 
 Meshummad and the rest, and when that fire has played 
 awhile it will burn up the dross of race-hatred and mis- 
 understanding. " Jehovah will turn to the peoples a pure 
 message, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord 
 to serve him with one consent." (Zeph. iii. 9.) For the
 
 14 
 
 promises of God will not be recalled : and his gifts and 
 calling are without repentance. "Jehovah shall be king 
 over all the earth ; in that day shall Jehovah be one, and 
 His name one." (Zech. xiv. 9.) To the bringing about of 
 this end Israel must contribute : God's call to her to occupy 
 a Messianic, mediatorial, priestly position as between God 
 and the nations is irrevocable. Only I believe that in the 
 work (though she be the elder sister in knowledge and in 
 privilege) she will not be alone. Do you remember Isaiah's 
 prophecy about the Gentile peoples of Egypt and Assyria ? 
 " In that day shall there be a highway of friendliness out of 
 Egypt into Assyria, and the Assyrian shall visit Egypt and 
 the Egyptian Assyria, and the Egyptians shall worship along 
 with the Assyrians." (Isaiah xix. ad Jin.) May we not read 
 now into these verses any names that stand to us to-day as 
 types of uncovenanted, if you like of heathen powers, and 
 finish the passage thus: "In that day Israel shall be third 
 with (Egypt? let us say with Gentile Christendom) and with 
 (Assyria? let us say with the awakening Orient), a blessing 
 in the midst of the earth: whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, 
 saying, ' Blessed be Gentile Christendom my people and the 
 Orient the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.' " 
 
 Cambridge: Printed at the University Press.