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velocity than the professors of other creeds; and that some were landed on the barren plains of atheism and materialism, and, losing their balance of mind, were turned into adversaries. The havoc of this "Sturm und Drang" period of Judaism is great, and causes serious losses; but it is beginning to work its own cure. It has opened the eyes of the more sober to the perils with which their faith is threatened, and electrified into new activity the Party of the Centre, which is encamped at equal distance from both extremes. To it we shall now briefly advert. It is the party of reform, of progress within the boundary-lines of Judaic doctrine. To the initiative of that party are due the new developments. The largest and most influential congregations in these States profess its doctrines, and it may be called, without presumption, the dominant feature of American Judaism.

In order to understand this movement, it should be remembered, above all things, that Jewish reform is not a revolt against the past, no rising against an oppressive church, no revulsion from a spiritual tyranny. Nothing is more remarkable in its leaders than their profound reverence for those very teachers from whose opinions they are now constrained to dissent. They are the identical men who have thrown floods of light on Hebrew literature, and partly redeemed from the dust of the libraries the vast bequests of former generations of scholars. It is they who gained for Hebrew literature the ear of the Christian scholar, so long closed against it. It is they whose industry and self-denying zeal, and varied scholarship, have contributed so much to wipe away the stigma which has been fastened on the productions of the Hebrew mind in the middle ages. Starting from the fundamental proposition that in religion form and idea must be distinguished, and that the former varies with surrounding conditions and the new developments of the latter, they look on Phariseeism as one of the stages through which the religious thought of the Hebrew race necessarily had to pass, in order to preserve its identity; the minute elaborations of the Law being like the small links which, joined together, become the panoply of the warrior. If the Reformers turn aside from the old path, it is not in scorn, but with a lively sense of gratitude to those whose self-sacrificing piety saved Judaism from perishing under the load it had to bear. But they claim, and

must claim, the right to do for their own generation what the wisest of the past did for theirs. It is true that their labors have so far been largely absorbed in pruning the old tree, but not wholly so. The accumulation of rituals was so vast, and the connection between form and idea so close, that it required decades of cautious work to remodel the one without serious injury to the other. This merely preparatory period is now passing away, and that of reconstruction has commenced. The lost uniformity will be replaced by a union based on modern principles; the worship, which hitherto has been only pruned of excrescences, is now being replenished with new ideas. The Jewish pulpit begins to draw within its discussions topics of universal interest; the Sabbaths and the feasts, which were chiefly retrospective, are now made expressive of the sentiments which rule in the hearts of the living; the religious training of the children is brought into harmony with the general culture under which they are educated; and a most hopeful beginning has been made in the establishment of scholastic institutions for the purpose of planting on this continent what the Germans call "Hebrew science." These, and similar signs, leave no doubt that Jewish reform has now entered upon that career for which all preceding endeavors have broken the way.

Founded on the principle of historical development, Jewish reform does not claim finality for any of its creations. True to the genius of Judaism, it has formulated no creed, and exacts no subscription to dogmas. It reserves for future generations the rights which it claims for itself; nay, the great hope by which it is animated postulates the freedom of future progression.

It will thus be seen that the modern Israelite, so far from dreading the liberal ideas of religion which our time has matured, welcomes them to his sanctuary. He sees no antagonism between them and the spirit of the faith which he teaches. The new liturgies that have been arranged for the reformed worship, whatever their shortcomings, are yet significant for the broad

*Two preparatory schools of the future Hebrew college have been in operation for some time: one founded at Cincinnati by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and one by the Temple Emanu-El, of this city. Both promise excellent results. The training of the Hebrew rabbi for his office must begin early in life, as otherwise he can never thoroughly master the immense literature that forms his special domain.

humanity which pervades them-as evidence of the unreserve with which the compilers accept the emancipation of religion. from the more contracted views of the past. All the invocations in which the oppressed heart of the down-trodden race sought relief; all exaggerated notions of racial sanctity and divine election; all the grosser elements of the Messianic idea; all the mystic and cabalistic deposits which were swept into the synagogue by the various religions with which the Jews came in contact during their wide wanderings; all the laments over the lost glories of the sacrificial service, and the yearnings after restoration of national supremacy-have either entirely disappeared, or been spiritualized. Only the framework, and the typical parts of the old ritual, have been retained, and the room thus gained filled up with devotions in which modern Judaism is fully reflected.

Finally, the relation of Judaism to other forms of faith has passed through a purifying process. The prophetic utterance that "from the rising of the sun even unto the going down thereof, great is the name of the Lord among the nations," which, though sometimes obscured, has never been entirely forgotten in Judaism, is now proclaimed in more than its native force. The root-idea of the unity of God now enunciates the unity of the human race, and the definite recognition that He who revealed himself in Israel had his witnesses in all ages and in all climes. In the grossest perversions of the religious impulse the modern Jew still hears the throbbing of the human heart; and, although he opposes all kinds of idolatries as firmly as did his fathers in darker days, his judgment is tempered with pity, and his opposition softened by the love to which he holds all men, as men, entitled. He is no adversary of Christianity; no enemy to the Church. He recognizes their great services to the human race, the zeal and devotion of so many of their children, and praises them in the gates for the many noble monuments of their charity. What he resists is their deviations from the truth as it was delivered to him. This he dares not compromise. But he rejoices in every sign, and they are increasing day by day, that the chasm which separated the daughters from their mother is narrowing, and that bridges are being thrown across it on which those who were, but never ought to have been, estranged from

each other, may meet for the exchange of assurances of restored friendship. Christian churches have invited Jewish ministers to their pulpits; and thus, after eighteen centuries of bootless strife, returned the hospitality which the first apostles of Christianity met in the synagogues. We honor the men who make such professions of liberality and love of truth, and adopt such practical methods of proving that religion can live with freedom of discussion, and may as assuredly draw men nearer to each other as hitherto she has separated them!

We shall consider our humble efforts in these pages abundantly rewarded, if they contribute, in even a slight measure, to the increase of that good-will toward men in the announcement of which Christianity glories, and Judaism finds its highest aim.

GUSTAV GOTTHEIL.

VI.

THE OUTLOOK.

THE Republican party had no leaders. It looked up to great and earnest men, but it had no half-dozen leaders. Wade, Chase and Giddings, Stevens and Cameron, Seward and Greeley, Lincoln, Sumner, Stanton, Andrew, Wilson, Hale and Fessenden, Palfrey and Adams, were equals; no one, or three of them, claimed precedence. The cement of the party was a principle; not any idolatry, like that which made the Whig cling to and echo Webster and Clay. The men who created the Republican party were men of convictions. They sought, more or less directly, but in dead earnest, to limit and kill slavery. The men whom the Republican party has created are not men of convictions. They seek only to use for party or personal ends the power they have inherited.

Lacking its old cement-a great purpose-the party is falling to pieces, like bowlders from a wall without mortar. Its managers have been so dull and timid in using their great victory, they have so wasted their opportunities, that they have suffered the Southern question-their whole capital-to fall prematurely into abeyance. On their own theory they stand to-day with no raison d'être, no excuse for their existence. Their strength lay in a public opinion well informed as to Southern purpose and the nature of Southern civilization, and watchful of the possible reaction from its sore defeat. The events of the ten years before the war were what taught and trained that opinion. But a generation has come upon the stage since. The active young men, the van of party movement, were then in their cradles. They knew nothing of those events as they took place, and the history of them is not yet written. We have heard more than one man, twenty-five years old, ask, with natural ignorance, "Was there ever a mob in Boston, and what was it about?"

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