ARTICLE IV.-MODERN JUDAISM.

What is Judaism? or a Few Words to the Jews. By Rev. RAPHAEL D'C LEWIN. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 90, 92, and 94 Grand street. 1870.

TAKING up casually the little volume that heads this Article, our thoughts have been drawn to the subject of God's ancient people, and to some new developments of modern Judaism that are not without interest.

The Reformation, with its broader light of reason and charity, did not bring with it more liberal and intelligent views in respect to the Jews; and it entirely failed to awaken the least right Christian sentiment toward this people, or to lead to a better treatment of them; and down to this day in Europe, Jewish persecution has continued, more silent than in the middle-ages, yet almost equally great, only substituting the written law for the violent hand. And yet it is a wellproved historical fact that the Jews, in no age since their dispersion, have been, unless stirred up by persecution, a troublesome people in the State; on the contrary, they have been an industrious part of the population, minding their own affairs, and, from fear and policy, scrupulously regardful of law. They have often borne Christian persecution with Christian patience. Children of a true faith but of a perverted hope, amid convulsions sufficient to have annihilated the strongest national life, they have seen vigorous nations die, and yet have preserved their individuality of race and moral characteristics; and, can we doubt, that they are kept for something greater and better? Intertwined in the past and the future with the religious destiny of the world, is not the Jew really a representative religious man? He was once recognized to be a child of God as a Jew; and may he not, in some sense, in the future, still be accepted of heaven, and be right in the sight of God, as a Jew? Judaism is held by its adherents to be the

very essence and substance of religion, as representing the foundation principle of belief in "the one only God." This is true in regard to the pure religion of the Jews. Here is the substratum on which true religion is built. Let Christian and Jew dig down to their original foundations, and these will be seen to be composed of this same great underlying truth. The glory of the Jew is, that he preserved, more faithfully than all other peoples, the original revelation made to man of the unity of God. Ernest Renan makes this the theme of one of his eloquent but fanciful generalizations; and he thus portrays with facile pen, the Semitic character and religion, applying this description especially to the Hebrew race:

"Their character is religious rather than political, and the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant, and sustained by a fervor which finds its peculiar expression in prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found deficient in scientific and philosophical ingenuity. Their poetry is chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage. Their political inability to organize on a large scale has deprived them of the means of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their character is a negative one-their inability to perceive the general and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction toward the individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion, lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and useless for speculation."

Max Müller justly criticises this analysis of Renan, and shows its unsoundness in some essential particulars; and especially he proves the falsity of Renan's theory that the monotheistic principle of the Jew, and of the Semitic nations generally, springs from a constitutional instinct; he shows the absurdity of the idea that the Semitic nations who have been at turns worshipers of Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch,

Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal—the sun, moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,-were endowed above other nations, with a monotheistic instinct. The many and frequent lapses of the Jews into polytheistic worship, are also at variance with this theory. That mere natural instinct does not lead men to the belief in the unity of God, it might be proved from the fact that polytheism, or belief in many gods, even if it do not and cannot precede belief in a God, still may precede, and probably has often done so, belief in one only God. And that mere philosophy does not lead men to this belief in the unity of God, there is a curious illustration in the history of the Jews themselves, when, in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the most learned men among the Jews and those most addicted to Greek philosophy, entered into a plot to destroy the worship of one God, and to introduce pagan rites.

But it is nevertheless true, that we owe to the Jew the preservation of the revealed truth of the One Supreme God, the Creator (not only the architect as Anaxagoras held, but the Creator) of the world and of men-the Father of spiritsbesides whom there is no other God. This is assuredly the root-principle of religion, and to the Jews are we indebted for the conservation of this precious truth, perceived with inspired clearness by Abraham, and handed down through the patriarchs and prophets to the time of the fuller revelation of the nature and will of God in Jesus Christ, who himself, after the flesh, was a Jew. This belief in one God is the groundwork of morality as well as of religion; since polytheism could afford no standard of right action, though flashes of natural virtue are seen in all ancient religions; but Judaism, or the pure Judaism, clearly set forth the solid basis of the divine will, or law, of God, for Christianity, ethical and spiritual, to rest upon. Christianity does not repudiate (we call upon our Jewish brethren to note this) true Judaism, but rather builds upon it. Here is the moral foundation of a more spiritual religion. Christ did not destroy the law and the prophets; he confirmed their teachings, leading them up to higher developments of the nature and law of God, showing the true character of that law to be love, and, as exhibited toward man, to be human redemption from sin. The law came by Moses, but

grace and truth by Jesus Christ. We see the unity and at the same time the difference of the two religions. This grace and truth which belong to Christ's religion, belong to the individual heart, as the revelation and gift of God through Christ to it, whereas Judaism, even as we see it in the Old Testament, was more of a general and national, than a personal faith; to be sure the best spirits like David and Isaiah pierced through the theocratic to the personal truth; but it represented God as the law-giver of a nation, and every Jew as a member belonging to this national kingdom of God, and claiming its common privileges and benefits, rather than one, who in and by himself, was united to God by his own act of faith. Although, therefore, Judaism contained the germ of a higher faith, yet it was but the germ. In Christianity God is brought nigh the heart of man, and in his Son we may see the Father, and come to Him, and love Him, whereas in the Judaic system God was abstracted from the intimate fellowship of man —a king ruling in the loneliness of his terrible majesty, with "clouds and darkness" about His throne-a being of holiness and power, rather than of love and grace.

But we would speak especially of the modern aspects of this wonderful people and their religion, as far as we are acquainted with them. It were an invidious task to show that the ancient pure faith of the Jews, which the Saviour himself pronounced to be a standard of moral guilelessness, has, as a general thing, sunken in these days into many superstitious and gross errors, being brought slavishly under the influence of the traditional law, or of the Talmud and other Rabbinical scriptures, which exercise a minute and rigid despotism over every act, destructive of free will, and tend to make the Jew still more of a bigoted Jew in his intolerance and isolation. The Talmud, although an English writer has recently expended great powers of brilliant scholarship to establish its claims to an original authenticity, and an almost equal authority with the Old Testament, has, in the opinion of the most eminent Hebraists, by its assumptions and interpretations, gone far to destroy the spirituality of the law of Moses, and to introduce the most puerile and even vicious beliefs and customs-such

as prayers offered to saints and relics, the doctrine of Purgatory, the allowance of usury, the forbidding of agriculture, the repressal of all sympathy with other faiths and nations, and the inculcation of a Jesuitical dealing with others than Jews, that have greatly corrupted the morality of the Jewish character. Not only has the veil been upon the heart of congregations where Moses is read, but it is to be feared that Moses is not much read at all; and if he is, it is in the synagogues in the Hebrew tongue, which language is a dead language now to multitudes of the younger Jews, in England and our own country, who, if they are taught to read Hebrew, are taught to read or pronounce merely the character, without understanding its meaning.

On the other hand, the tendency among some Hebrew communities, is strong towards out and out infidel opinions, especially among the Jews of Germany; and many of the most learned and acute opposers of supernatural truth, of late years, have been of the Jewish race.

But let us, before going further, endeavor to give some little idea of the number and extent of the Hebrew race at the present time, and the countries where they are principally to be found.

Berghaus, in his "Physical Atlas," quoted by Max Müller gives the following division of the human race according to religion:

The number of Jews who are now upon the earth is commorly computed in round numbers to be six millions, which is somewhere about Berghaus's estimate. Of these the greater part are in the East, in the Mohammedan portions of Europe, Asia and Africa. There are said to be not less than five hundred thousand of Jewish descent under the name of "Falashas," in Abyssina. The word "Falasha" means "exile." This people still preserve a kind of hieratic or sacred language