The boy who lends all his schoolfellows money is never popular. The sooner he draws in his loans the better for his pocket; he will never succeed in regaining good-will. Great Britain will vainly seek the love of foreign countries; she is far safer in trusting to the power of her own dominions. By courage, by wealth, and by enterprise she has lived through the great difficulties that beset her. A few years only are wanted to remove those that remain. Is she to falter at the last, and give up the fruit of so much past endurance and hardihood? Between England with world-wide interests and England shut up within herself it is hard to see how there can be any hesitation. Divested of her exterior dominions she would become the theatre of fierce war between the labouring, the moneyed, and the landed classes. Flooded with foreign goods to repay interest on past loans, sufficient occupation would be denied to the people; the moneyed classes would dread investments abroad, would see no room for investments at home, and would fight against the taxation they alone could pay. A fierce onslaught would be made on the land, and year by year the aggregate wealth of the nation would decrease. England is now one vast industrial concern. Deprive it of the means of making that industry profitable, and the loss of wealth will be as speedy as the previous gain. It is a fearful thing to deprive a people of the occupation and the objects which they have grown up to consider their own. There are three choices: one complete isolation; the second a further devotion to foreign interests, the leading principle of which is that England is to give everything, and not to receive even thanks in return; or the third, a return to the old healthy feeling that, recognising in Great Britain itself too narrow a field for the enterprise and industry of its people, sought and secured for them lands all over the globe, in the settlement and advancement of which the great characteristics of their race might have full scope. Is the mission to be given up because at the last moment before success is achieved a few who have been specially fortunate discover that their own particular goal is won? The consciousness of duties fulfilled is the truest human sense of happiness. In order to its attainment man must be occupied. Labour and work are in themselves as well as in their results the sources of enjoyment. If we could suppose that a people had so laboured as to leave nothing else to be effected, the happiest thing for it would be so much destruction of its labour as would leave it work to do over again. It cannot be for the happiness of the British race to shut it out from the labour and work for which, more perhaps than any other race, its restless energy craves. There is not work enough in Great Britain for those who have been born to the heritage on which the sun never sets. Lord Blachford may rest assured there is such an identity of thought in the British people as to make them feel wherever they are situated a sufficient unity of purpose to enable them to maintain one nationality, and Mr. Lowe may find an

answer to the hard economic problems he propounds in the simple fact that the value of union to the British people is worth the indirect money risks he discovers. Still the result will probably be as they wish. Great Britain is not alive to her own interest, or rather her politicians do not keep pace with her industrial classes. These are multiplying their interests in the Colonies enormously. By the time that the governing class has discovered that the interests of the country demand federation, the Colonies will probably be so advanced on the road to independence on which Lord Blachford, Mr. Lowe, and others have bid them speed their way, that they may resolutely refuse all overtures to return. And so by the efforts of a few men, and the inaction of a great many, the most beneficent Empire that ever dawned on the world will be turned into a number of discordant States. If, however, federation is not to be, there is no gainsaying the truth of Mr. Lowe's contention, that it is a one-sided arrangement which makes the mother-country bound to the Colonies, and these free to depart whenever they please. Better at once to face the position than to continue to assist the growth of future aliens.

JULIUS VOGEL.

CAN JEWS BE PATRIOTS?

'Der Gedanke ist mächtig genug, ohne Anmassung und Unrecht, über die Anmassung und das Unrecht zu siegen.'-ZUNZ.

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 for ever been relegated to the limbo of mediavalism. 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 for ever. 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 characterise 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 VOL. III.-No. 14. UU

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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 :—

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But surely the words which immediately follow the above Biblical text would suffice to disprove the charge. For the whole earth is mine.' The words spoken by the Lord when He called Abraham, 'In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,"1 equally proclaim the Divine concern in the welfare of the entire human family, and indicate the relation intended to subsist between the chosen race and the rest of the world. And in that same spirit of catholicity does Moses, the representative man of this exclusive race, address his 'tribal God' as the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh,' the God alike of Jew and Gentile. All human beings form part of His universal family, all are alike created in His image, all are alike sustained, loved, and redeemed by Him, the eternal, merciful Father of the human race.'3

1 Gen. xii. 3.

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2 Numb. xxvii. 16.

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3 Cr. Pirke Aboth, ch. iii. § 14. Man' (not the Israelite) is the object of divine love, inasmuch as he has been created in the image of the Lord.'

Nor do the teachings of the prophets disprove the Professor's assertion less distinctly. Adonai,' in whose name the inspired seers speak, is not the tutelary Deity of the Israelites, is not the God of one people only, whose territory is bounded by the Lebanon and the Jordan. We hear their glowing admonitions addressed to all the great empires of the East-to Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia no less than to the kingdom of Judæa. Obadiah and Jonah, indeed, were sent exclusively to preach repentance to pagan Edom and pagan. Nineveh. Nor do the interpreters of the Divine will announce their messages with cold insensibility. Their hearts overflow with pity while they declare Heaven's stern decree. My compassion yearneth for Moab as a harp," Isaiah exclaims. Raise the lamentation over the king of Tyre, over Pharaoh,' are the words of Ezekiel. Nor are these kingdoms any the less objects of Divine mercy than is Israel himself. Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of mine hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.'

Whilst the ancient classical poets taught that the golden age of the world was a thing of the past, the prophets of Israel announce that it must be looked for in future time. And what is the picture they unroll before us? Not Israel, the triumphant, enthroned in majesty on Zion as the conqueror of the earth, but all the nations of the globe beatified by the possession of truth and the acknowledgment of the Divine unity. For then will I turn to the nations a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent.' And Malachi, the last of the prophets acknowledged by Judaism, sums up these teachings in the touching words: 'Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us?'s a quotation heard many a time and oft from Christian as well as Jewish pulpits. How can the learned Professor assert, in the face of it, that the Jews regarded God as the Deity of His chosen race, and not as the Father of all?

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Mr. Goldwin Smith next states that the morality embodied in the Mosaic Law was in its day a nearer approach to humanity than any other known law. But he adds the damaging qualification that both the morality and the law were distinctly tribal.' It sanctioned a difference of principle between the rule of dealing with a Hebrew and that of dealing with a stranger, which the civilised conscience now condemns.' A strange misconception! Amid the great divergence of opinions in the theological world, there is one point on which unanimity prevails-that the Decalogue taught on Sinai contains the germs of all the duties which man owes his Creator and his fellow-creatures. The Professor may look upon the opinion of a Jewish Rabbi as warped by partiality. Will he reject with like disdain the authoritative teaching of the Dean of Westminster? • Chap. xvi. 11.

Chap. xxviii. 12, xxxii. 2.

Zephaniah iii. :.

Isaiah xix. 25.

s Mal. ii. 10.