their own religion, then the rest of us may feel assured that we are not being led far wrong; for whatever movement brought about that result must have been a movement towards the line of true Progress.[1]
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM
"It is a slight thing that thou shouldest restore Israel; I will set thee for a Light to the Gentiles."—Isaiah xlix. 6.
The words "Exodus" and "Reform" have a natural and vital connection; the founders of the Mosaic system intended to prepare a standing council of reformers, a body capable of quietly reforming all the thought-material of the world, by introducing into intellectual life that rhythmic motion which is characteristic of physical life.
The true Re-former is distinguished not by any particular opinions or practices, but by a something, impossible to define, the very presence of which makes stagnant thought uncomfortable. He possesses faculties which orthodoxy lacks; he has intuitions the source of which is unknown to it, the purpose and meaning of which it fails to conceive, and about which it only understands, vaguely, that they threaten danger to its stability and peace. When the young Mazzini was thrown, innocent, into prison, officialism gave this account of the motives for his arrest:—
"He is a young man of remarkable talent; very fond of
- ↑ Given as a lecture at the Jewish Working-Men's Club, London.
