CEREMONIALISM.

THE Jews of to-day, who live in the most advanced countries of the world, are, with every fibre of their being, part and parcel of modern civilization. At the same time they know themselves to be the heirs of the ancient national religion of the Hebrew people and the foreordained continuators of the spiritual history and mission of Israel.

This twofold life of the modern Jew on the one hand is a high privilege and a source of spiritual power, and on the other it brings on numerous conflicts, some of which appear irreconcilable. The customs, usages, and ceremonial laws of the ancient Asiatic Hebrews and of the isolated medieval Jews are in many respects hopelessly antagonistic to the ways of life of modern Occidental civilization. Let us not in a spirit of levity and selfdelusion slur over this fact. Let us full earnestly face it, as becomes sincere men. We may deny it with our lips, but in our heart abides the conviction that the contrast is there, often glaring, between the old and the new order of things, between Canaan and Europe. We are the children of two worlds; with heart and soul we belong to both, and only with the last breath would we renounce either of them.

It is true the Christians are also very largely Israelitish in sentiment, belief, and ethics. Our Book of Life is also their Book of Books. The lofty moral ideals, which were evolved during post-biblical times, and which in many respects mark a considerable advance beyond those of the Bible, are also embodied in the writings of the New Testament. Our prophets and sweet singers, our heroes and

martyrs, are also venerated by the Christians and looked up to as noble types of God-seeking humanity. But Christianity, though at first a national Jewish sect, soon spread westward, from Asia to Europe, from the Jews to the Greeks and Romans, and became in the course of a century or two thoroughly denationalized. In its struggle for existence, growth, and expansion Christianity broke loose from almost all distinctively national customs, ceremonies, and laws which were repugnant and unacceptable to the Occidental peoples. Through this act of denationalization, the abolition of all ancestral usages and regulations which had no moral meaning and educational purpose for the world at large, Christianity got the start of Judaism in the conversion of mankind. Without this bold departure it would have continued through, perhaps, four or five generations as an insignificant Jewish sect, at last to disappear and be forgotten. By casting off the garb of national ceremonialism Christianity succeeded in becoming one of the great universal religions.

The rise and spread of Islam, which almost extirpated the Christian religion in the Orient, caused the latter to be thenceforth for good and evil identified with the life and history of the Occidental nations. During the Middle Ages Christianity came to be tainted with the fierce and gloomy superstitions, inoculated with the savage instincts of the new barbarous nations inhabiting Europe, corrupted with the gross vices of the primitive Teutons and Slavs, and contaminated with the more refined immoralities of the Latin and Greek races. With the resurrection of the sciences and arts and the rebirth of the Israelitish moral powers, it emerges along with the Occidental nations from a state of seeming decadence and degeneracy to new purity and vigor. If it did not lead, it at least followed steadily in the wake of advancing Western civilization, for the simple and cogent reason that the Occidental nations, that are the creators and standard-bearers of modern culture,

happen to be also the highest representatives and acknowledged standard-bearers of Christianity. True it is, the results of modern science and the theory of the universe it holds, in more than one respect seem to clash with some of the vital dogmas, and to negative some of the essential doctrines, of the Christian religion as authoritatively taught by the Catholic and the Protestant churches. But these grave questions concern merely matters of faith and philosophy. As to manners and customs and the general ways of life there practically exists no antagonism between Western Christianity and Western civilization. The antagonism, as has been said, is confined to problems of metaphysics and to differences between ideal ethics and actual imperfect conduct.

When we turn from Christianity to the contemplation of Judaism in its relation to modern civilization, we are met with difficulties of a different nature; one might say with difficulties of an opposite kind. In matters of faith and dogma Judaism finds itself in full accord with the general postulates of modern science. It knows of but one theory of the universe which it is bound to combat to the bitter end, namely, soulless materialism or atheism. In the holy of holies of religious metaphysics the central ideas of Judaism dwell in peace and conscious harmony with the boldest and most comprehensive conception of modern Occidental philosophy. The belief in the absolute unity of God, implying the unity of universal life; the belief that unbounded nature is a perennial and progressive manifestation of the creative Infinite; the belief that justice and love are not accidental phenomena appearing in man, but are the divine revelations of the perfection and mercy of the Eternal; the doctrine that the human soul is godlike in essence and dignity and free from the taint of any imaginary hereditary guilt or curse; the conviction that man is a free moral agent, dependent for good or evil, for self-mastery or self-degradation, on his own free will; the view that

there is a Messianic future in store for mankind, when there will be a perfect humanity spontaneously living according to the indwelling laws of God: these vital tenets of Judaism, professed by all its adherents, by orthodox and reformer, are the very ideas which the greatest and profoundest philosophers of Europe have presented and are presenting as the last outcome and the most precious fruits of their speculation! The ark of the covenant, subsisting between God and mankind, containing the everlasting laws of justice and love, rests safely within the sanctuary of Israel's religion. No iconoclastic hands will ever break it. It will endure as long as the heavens endure. Philosophy and science are the cherubim from between whose wings the still divine voice speaks from the mercy-seat of the human heart and mind! In matters of faith and ethics. Judaism has indeed anticipated, or held pace with, the intellectual and moral progress of the most advanced civilization. But when we consider the outward forms and the ceremonial garb of Judaism, its most enthusiastic votaries can not close their eyes to the fact that it has here and elsewhere, but more especially in European lands, very much to throw aside entirely, much to change and modify, in order to be perfectly at one with the ways of life of modern civilization, so as to become in the deepest and widest sense one of its living and universal spiritual powers. With the exception of the numerous reform congregations in America, Judaism is still wearing, even in the most advanced countries of Europe, the ceremonial garments which fitted it well enough in Asia, but which look strange, out of date, and out of fit in the midst of the Occidental nations of today. Though universal to the core, though necessarily universal in tendency, though knowing itself destined by Providence to gather into its fold many millions from all nations, it yet appears to the eye of the fairest observers clad in its antiquated ceremonial costume which distinguished it during the grievous

isolation of the Middle Ages. Millions and tens of millions of Gentiles who are no longer Christians even in name, but are at one with us in all the essential elements of our religion, feel themselves repelled from Judaism. For, by retaining all its national ceremonies, usages, and laws dating from biblical, talmudical, and medieval times, it is made to appear intensely national or tribal, narrow and exclusive, and strangely out of harmony with its Occidental surroundings.

The student of history full well knows why Judaism has thus in seeming remained national and outlandish. Like all ancient religions, the religion of Israel was national in origin and scope. It had its roots deep in the heart of the people, it grew out of the spiritual experience of the people, it derived its purest and strongest forces from the vigorous morality of the chosen people; it was bound up with all the forms, customs, and laws of the national life; it was in keeping with the climate, and adjusted to the habits, manners, and occupations of that agricultural race; it was intertwined with all the historical memories of Israel, joyful and mournful. True, the greatest and wisest of God's prophets, in whom His spirit was a lamp shining far into futurity, in whose soul the indestructible essence of Israel's religion, ethical monotheism, blossomed forth into the ideas and ideals of universal love and universal humanity, these wondrous seers in their boldest visions often broke through the bounds of nationality, declaring in accents still ringing through the ages that Yahve was the God and Father, not of Israel alone, but of all the nations of the earth, and that His laws of justice and mercy will one day come to be the laws of life to all the tribes of men. They decried They decried many ancient ways and ancestral usages dear to the people's heart as vicious and ungodly. They sneered at most of the inherited religious practices and ceremonies, thought by the priesthood and the populace to constitute true piety.