meals, till recent times was deemed utterly impossible. In Columbus' time no human being considered it possible to cross the Atlantic in iron ships, in less than six days, without the use of sails. In biblical times it was held impossible to measure the earth and weigh it in balances. In our days the length, height, and depth, the weight and density of the sun, moon, and every planet are perfectly well known. Spectroscopy has in our days made possible what two centuries ago was regarded as a self-evident impossibility. The human mind can nowadays ascertain with scientific exactness the number and nature of the atomic elements present not only in our sun but in the remotest stars, whose light travels six thousand years before reaching our globe. The idea of changing air into a liquid and even turning it into a solid till recent times was denied by the strongest evidence of experience. Yet the testimony of experience, so long accepted with unquestioning faith by all men, in these days of ours has proved to be fallacious. According to the data of our given experience it is impossible to transform coal, stones, and other materials into food for man and animals. Yet the science of chemistry, which is still in its infancy, will probably one day be able to change inorganic matter into organic means of subsistence. Countless other things which are now universally believed to be beyond the range of possibility, one day will come to be well-known realities exciting as little surprise as the telegraph and telephone.

What, then, is eternally and absolutely impossible? That which is absolutely unthinkable, which is an irreconcilable contradiction to the indestructible categories of our mind. That is a priori impossible which is at war with the inborn ideas of the soul. The most fundamental of these innate ideas is: It is impossible for anything to spring from nothing. The law of universal causality, the necessary belief that nothing can exist or happen without a sufficient cause, is but another expression of the same innate idea. Hence, it is an absolute impossibility that

matter in any imaginable form, matter in the guise of nerve and brain, should be the parent cause of mind. Matter having no quality whatever in common with thought, the rise of consciousness out of it would be a new creation out of nothing, which is unthinkable.

Still both matter and mind exist. Neither can be identified with the other, nor can they be derived from each other. The two worlds, the inner world of consciousness and the external world of objects, seem to fall apart. In spite of their intimate relations and interactions these two eternal forms of existence seem separated by a yawning chasm with no bridge leading from one to the other. They face each other as irreconcilable contrasts. Materialism can by no tricks of sophistical reasoning drive mind from its position as a self-existing entity. Idealism can not deny matter and prove it to be a mere illusion. But the human mind can not rest in such dualism. The soul finds no peace in a world divided in itself. The very root of all knowledge is the indestructible and immediate belief that the universe forms a unity, that the soul is co-related to the world in all its parts, that all being is of one source, of one essence, of one energy. The very ground of all knowledge is the innate belief that behind the inner world of consciousness, and behind the phenomena of the world of objects, there is Divine Unity in which they are both embraced and in which their differences are reconciled and disappear. This belief in an all-pervading and all-enfolding Unity which binds together matter and mind in a supreme harmony, underlies all thought. This one Being reveals Himself as nature, and manifests Himself and is present in us as mind. In Him we live, move, and have our being. Yet He transcends both the human mind and nature. He is infinite and absolute. He is not circumscribed by the conditions within which matter exists. He is not circumscribed by the limitations which bound our intelligence.

WHY I AM A JEW.

THE very fact that the question, why I am a Jew, can be

put at all, conclusively proves that to be a Jew, in the deepest sense of the word, does not mean to belong to the alleged Jewish race or nationality, but to be a member of the Jewish church. For it would be considered sheer madness, say, for a Frenchman or a Spaniard to rise and explain why he is a Frenchman or a Spaniard. Once a Frenchman, always a Frenchman; one born of Spanish parents forever remains a Spaniard by the indestructible law of his physical identity. But one may change his religion and go over from one church to another. A Buddhist may become a Christian; a Christian may embrace Islam or be converted to Judaism or to any other religion. By changing his faith the Englishman does not break away from his English nationality nor from his assumed Anglo-Saxon race. In asking me why I am a Jew, you do consciously or unconsciously imply that I am a Jew of my own free will and accord, and that I might choose not to be a Jew if I had a mind to. The fact is, the moment a Jew embraces Christianity, or any other religion, he ceases to all intents and purposes to be a Jew. His own father and mother no longer regard him as a Jew, though they continue to love him as a son and to respect him as a man.

The question is, therefore, perfectly pertinent. Why am I a Jew? Why do I not embrace Christianity, the religion of the leading nations of the earth, the religion of the most powerful, the most civilized and progressive portion of mankind? Why do I cling to Yahvism, the faith of the powerless, ever-struggling minority? Why do I hold fast to the religion of the Jews, who are disfranchised and persecuted in many Christian lands and regarded

with inveterate prejudice and not a little contempt almost everywhere? If I were to join with my family any Christian church, it surely would not be to our worldly disadvantage. We would be received with open arms. The Christian pulpits would ring with hosannas and praises. All social barriers would fall as if by magic. We, too, would belong to the proud and powerful majority. I, too, might speak with unctuous pity of the deadening legalism of Judaism, with infinite self-satisfaction haul the Pharisees over the coals, and with upturned eyes pray to God to open the ears of the deaf Jews to the message of the cross. I, too, might in the pulpit and in my writings descant with swelling pride on our Christian civilization, expatiate on the infinite superiority of the ethics and ideals of Christianity, call and claim as Christian everything that is true, good, and beautiful in the life of humanity, and identify my little self with the greatest spiritual power in the world. Yet I forego, of my own deliberate choice, all these advantages and prerogatives and continue to be a faithful Jew. For what cogent reasons, then, am I a Jew?

First of all, I am a Jew because I believe in one only God, because I believe in the absolute and indivisible unity of the Supreme Being. I can not, by any effort of thought, imagination, or will, bring myself to believe in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; I can not embrace Christianity because the idea of a Triune God, of three persons in one and one in three, simply staggers my intelligence. It is as little comprehensible to me as the wildest dreams of one delirious with fever or the coruscations of a mind smitten with madness. I certainly mean no offense to my trinitarian fellow-men, whose intellectual powers are as sane and strong as those of the Jews. Those impregnated from their early childhood with the dogmas of trinitarian Christianity, no doubt, experience little difficulty in believing that the assumed three Divine Persons form an absolute unity. The mind of man is wonderfully and fearfully

made. It will continue to harbor through the years of intellectual maturity irreconcilable contradictions, absolutely antagonistic beliefs, if they are but implanted in the soul before the logical faculties have fully developed and become dominant, and before the intelligence has begun rigorously to apply the categories of reason to all given ideas. When such a mind emerges from the early state of passive receptivity, it finds the belief in the Trinity deeply inwrought in its very constitution, almost indissolubly interwoven with all moral ideas and ideals, intertwined with the sweet hopes of immortality, blended with the noblest spiritual aspirations. Then a fierce struggle begins in most Christian souls between faith and reason. Only a comparatively small number comes to end the inner struggle by dissolving the associations of ideas between the belief in the Triune God and all the elements of religion and ethics. It is with a bleeding heart that they break away from the cherished belief of the church, hallowed by innumerable tender memories of childhood and home. But the vast majority of Christians wrestle on bravely, and at last come forth victorious over all perplexing doubts. They find rest in the teachings of Christian apologetics that the dogma of the Trinity, though the highest truth, is yet an unfathomable and insoluble mystery, which the soul must accept with unquestioning faith. What man is infallible? Maybe the belief that three persons make up the Divine unity is a supreme transcendental truth. But we Jews are absolutely unable to give it lodgment in our mind. Were I seriously to strive to believe in a Triune God, it would wreck my mind and land me in a madhouse. If the Jews could bring themselves to believe in the Holy Trinity and in the other dogmas flowing from that central Christian belief, all would be well with them. There would be an end to the agony of ages, an end to the martyrdom of body and soul, an end to calumny and isolation. By suffering baptism, we would