upon Paul. He sprang away from the creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes. Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls. Sorrow and superstition he felt were again invading humanity.
"Alas!" he exclaimed at last, "I do now indeed believe in hell." "And I," cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the arms of her bishop, "once more believe in heaven."W. H. Mallock.
CAN JEWS BE PATRIOTS?
In the month of February last appeared an article by Professor Goldwin Smith, entitled "England's Abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey." With the political portion of that article I do not propose to deal. I am one of those ministers of religion who, rightly or wrongly, think it preferable not to add to the strife of tongues which political questions are apt to evoke. But the writer has thought fit towards the end of his paper to level a most violent diatribe against Jews and Judaism, and to revive charges which, it was imagined, had forever been relegated to the limbo of mediævalism. I feel myself bound, as one professing that ancient religious faith which has been attacked, not to allow those statements to pass unchallenged.
The time was when, on being reproached and reviled, we had no alternative but to muffle our faces in our gaberdines and meekly to hold our peace. Those times, it is to be hoped, have gone forever. We need no longer speak
With bated breath and whispered humbleness.
The interests of truth, the sacred cause of civil and religious freedom, demand that we should repel with indignation charges against our faith and our race—charges which I cannot characterize otherwise than as cruel and gratuitous calumnies.
The gist of the indictment brought against us is that we are no patriots. "They [the Jews] have now been everywhere made voters; to make them patriots while they remain genuine Jews is beyond the legislator's power." I shall anon test the truth of this astounding proposition by the teachings of Judaism and the history of the Jews. But, before doing so, I shall examine the arguments whereby Mr. Goldwin Smith seeks to make his statement good. He says that the monotheism of the Jew, like that of Islam, is unreal. "The Jewish God, though single, is not the Father of all, but the deity of his chosen race." One could almost imagine that he who could pen such words had never taken the Bible in his hand, for the very first pages of Holy Writ contradict the assertion. The Hebrew Scripture brings before us the Lord as Creator of heaven and earth. It tells us that all the families of the earth have one common origin, have sprung from one and the same stock. Not as a mere poetical fancy, but with the sober logic of fact, this venerable document "makes the whole world kin," and teaches, in the genealogical table of nations written in the tenth chapter of Genesis, that the Semite, the Aryan and Turanian, Slav, Kelt, and Teuton are descended from one common ancestor. It is true we read in Exodus (xix. 5), "Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people." And from this text it has often been erroneously represented that this selection by the Lord implied a partiality, as though he loved the descendants of Jacob only, whilst the fate of the rest of mankind was a matter of indifference to him. The chosen people! How often has that expression been repeated with ill-disguised contempt, as though the assumption of this term were due to our self-satisfied righteousness, as though it were an outcome of pride and haughtiness, as though it breathed an exclusive spirit which caused us to regard ourselves as the sole objects of divine care and providence! Accordingly Lessing, in his noble plea for universal tolerance, "Nathan der Weise," puts these words into the mouth of the Templar, the representative of Christianity:—
Doch kennt Ihr auch das Volk
Das diese Menschenmäkelei zuerst
Getrieben? Wiszt Ihr, Nathan, welches Volk
Zuerst das auserwählte Volk sich nannte?
Wie? wenn ich dieses Volk nun, zwar nicht hasste,
Doch wegen seines Stolzes zu verachten
Mich nicht entbrechen könnte? Seines Stolzes
Den es auf Christ und Muselmann vererbte
Nur seim Gott sei der rechte Gott!
