Part 4

Of course Hospitals have their important uses. No one denies it. Some cases of disease and some degrees of poverty require such institutions. But this does not justify the monstrous over-use of them now in vogue. Even for the class whose homes are too crowded to admit of nursing being properly or safely done in them, I cannot but think that small Cottage Hospitals, where the wife or mother or daughter would be free to perform her natural duties by the bedside, and where she would be shown how best to perform them, would be infinitely preferable for every reason, moral and physical, to our present Palaces of Pain. Excellent also in all ways will be the plan of Nurses provided for the poor in their own homes by the Queen’s wise gift of the balance of her Women’s Jubilee Fund. The secret of the excessive resort to Hospitals is of course the encouragement to patients given by the medical schools attached to them, for the sake of obtaining a large supply of “clinical material.”

Lastly, we come to speak of the Education of the Religious Emotions. We have already referred to the outbursts of contagious enthusiasm in the Crusades and Revivals. It remains to say a few words respecting the various sources of religious emotion, at first and second hand.

A fundamental difference between the Catholic and Puritan mind seems to be that the former seizes on every available means for producing religious emotion _through the senses_; the latter turns away from such means with intense mistrust, and limits itself to appeals _through the mind_. Dark and solemn churches like that at Assisi decorated by Giotto (which the friar who showed it told me was the “best place in the whole world for prayer”), gorgeous altars, splendid functions, pictures, music, incense,—all these are to the Catholic and High Churchman veritable “means of grace”; _i.e._, they call out in them emotions which either are religious or they think lead to religion. Long Prayers, Hymns, Bible-readings, and preachings,—these, on the other hand, are the Evangelicals’ means of grace, and they produce in them emotions distinctly religious. We must, I think, treat these differences as matters of spiritual _taste_, concerning which it is proverbially idle to dispute. Both have their advantages, and both their great perils: the Catholic method has the peril of lapping the soul in a fool’s paradise of fancied piety, which is only sensuous excitement; the Puritan method has that of creating the hysteria of a Revival. In each case it is the contagion of _the emotion of a multitude_ which creates the danger. Solitary religious emotion, either produced by the glory and majesty of Nature or by lonely prayer and communings with God, can lead to no evil; nay, is the climax of purest joy vouchsafed to man. Not misguided are those who enter into their chambers and shut the door “to pray to Him who sees in secret,” or who go up into the hills and woods

“To seek That Being in whose honor shrines are weak, Upreared by human hands.”

The converse of the emotions of Awe and Reverence—namely, the tendency to jest and ridicule—are supposed by some to be dangerous enemies to religion. I do not believe they are so. I think a genuine sense of humor and a keen eye for the ludicrous is a most precious protection against absurdities and excesses. Like Tenderness and Strength, the sense of the Sublime and of the Ridiculous are complementary to each other, and exist only in perfection together in the same character. It is the man who cannot laugh who never weeps.

Finally, we reach the point where the religious emotions, produced either alone or by contagion, effect the greatest of spiritual miracles: that “conversion” or revulsion of the soul which ancient India, no less than Christendom, likened to a New or Second Birth. It would appear that, when this mysterious change does not take place by the solitary work of the Divine on the human spirit, it does so by the attractive power of another human soul, which has itself already undergone the great transformation. It is the _living_ Saint who conveys spiritual _life_. He need not be a very great or far advanced soul in the spiritual realm. Many a simple person with no exceptional gifts has “turned to the wisdom of the just” the hearts of strong men, whom the most eloquent and thoughtful of preachers have failed to move by a hair. But the greater the saint, the greater naturally must be his power. It was the contagion of Divine Love, caught from him who felt it most of all the sons of men, which moved the little band in the upper chamber of Jerusalem—who moved the world.

It is worthy of notice that when a man so powerfully influences another as to “convert” him in the true sense, _i.e._ to bring him to the higher spiritual life, it very often happens that at the same time he “converts” him in the lower sense, to the doctrines of the special Church to which he himself belongs. The man has received the impulse of religion from that particular direction. It has come to him colored by the hues of his friend’s piety, and he accepts it, doctrines and all, as he finds it. The matter has been one of emotional contagion, not of critical argument on either side.

It is impossible to form the faintest estimate of the good—the highest kind of good—which a single devout soul may accomplish in a lifetime by spreading the holy contagion of the Love of God in widening circles around it. But just as far as the influence of such men is a cause for thankfulness, so great would be the calamity of a time, if such should ever arrive, when there should be a dearth of saints in the world, and the fire on the altar should die down. A Glacial Period of Religion would kill many of the sweetest flowers in human nature; and woe to the land where (as it would seem is almost the present case in France at this moment) the priceless tradition of Prayer is being lost, or only maintained in fatal connection with outworn superstitions.

To resume the subject of this paper. We have seen that the Emotions, which are the chief springs of human conduct, may either be produced by their natural stimuli or conveyed by contagion from other minds, but that they can neither be _commanded_ nor _taught_. If we desire to convey good and noble emotions to our fellow-creatures, the only means whereby we can effect that end is by filling our own hearts with them till they overflow into the hearts of others. Here lies the great truth which the preachers of Altruism persistently overlook. It is better to _be_ good than to _do_ good. We can benefit our kind in no way so much as by being ourselves pure and upright and noble-minded. We can never _teach_ Religion to such purpose as we can _live_ it.

It was my privilege to know a woman who for more than twenty years was chained by a cruel malady to what Heine called a “mattress grave.” Little or nothing was it possible for her to do for any one in the way of ordinary service. Her many schemes of usefulness and beneficence were all stopped. Yet, merely by attaining to the lofty heights of spiritual life and knowledge, that suffering woman helped and lifted up the hearts of all who came around her, and did more real good, and of the highest kind, than half the preachers and philanthropists in the land. Even now, when her beautiful soul has been released at last from its earthly cage, it still lifts many who knew her to the love of God and Duty to remember what she was, and to the faith in immortality to think what now she must be, within the golden gates.

ESSAY III. PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM.

When the new “Science of Religions” has been further developed, it will probably be recognized that the character of each is determined, not only by its own proper dogmas, but by those of the religion which it has superseded. Men do not, as they often imagine, tear up an old faith by the roots and plant a new one on the same ground. They only cut across the old and graft the new on its stem. Thus it comes to pass, for example, that much of the sap of Roman Paganism runs through the pores of Latin Christianity, and much of that of Odin worship through those of Teuton and Scandinavian Protestantism. Still more certainly does the faith held by an individual man in his earlier years dye his mind with its peculiar color, so that no subsequent conversion ever wholly obliterates it, but makes him like a frescoed wall on which yellow has been painted over blue, leaving as the result—green. The tint of Anglican piety may be discerned even beneath a pervert Cardinal’s scarlet robe. A Romish acolyte, transformed into the most brilliant of sceptical essayists, still boasts that the ecclesiastical set of his brain enables him “alone in his century” to understand Christ and Saint Francis.[13] A Jew, baptized and become Prime Minister of England, wrote novels and made history altogether in the vein of the author of the Book of Esther. Beneath the wolf’s clothing of the whole pack of modern Secularists, Agnostics, and Atheists, friction reveals (for the present generation, at all events) a flock of harmless Christian sheep.

For this reason hasty efforts to fuse religious bodies which happen to manifest tendencies to doctrinal agreement seem predestined to failure. Much else besides mere readiness to pronounce similar symbols of faith is needed to gather men permanently into one temple. Amalgamation attempted prematurely can only result in accentuating those diversities of sentiment which have stronger power to dissever than any intellectual affinities have charms to unite. Ecclesiastical schisms are infinitely easier to effect than ecclesiastical coalitions.

Nevertheless, the levelling of the fences which have for ages kept men of different religions apart is, _per se_, a matter for such earnest rejoicing that we may well exult at any instance of it, independently of ulterior hopes or projects. Especially must our sympathies with those who are thus clearing the ground be quickened when the faith to be dis-immured is an old and venerable one, the nearest of all to our own,—a faith whereof any important modification must be fraught with incalculable consequences to the civilized world. The new Reform among the Jews is emphatically such a movement,—an effort to throw down the high and jealous walls behind which Judaism has kept itself in seclusion. The gates of the Ghettos, which for a thousand years shut in the Jews at night in every city in Europe, were not more rigid obstacles to social sympathy and intercourse than have been the nation’s own iron-bound prejudices and customs. But just as these Ghettos themselves, so long “little provinces of Asia dropped into the map of Europe,” have been thrown open at last by the growing enlightenment of Christian States, so the Jewish moral walls of prejudice are being cast down by the advanced sentiment of cultured Jews.

It is the specialty of the higher religions to unfold continually new germs of truth, while the lower ones remain barren and become overgrown with the rank fungi of myth and fable. I do not speak now of the results of external influences bearing on every creed, and tending to vivify and fructify it. Such influences have done much, undoubtedly, even for Christianity itself, which has been stirred by all the agencies of the Saracen conquests, the classic Renaissance, modern ethics and metaphysics, modern critical science, and at last in our time by the extension of the theological horizon over the broad plains of Eastern sacred literature. I am speaking specially of the prolific power of the richer creeds to go on, generation after generation, bringing forth fresh, golden harvests, like the valleys of California. If we look for an instance of the opposite barrenness, we shall find it in the worn-out religions of China, ice-bound and arid as the desolate plains and craters of the moon; the Tae-ping rebellion having been perhaps a solitary development of heat caused by the impingement on them of the orb of Christianity. If, on the other hand, we seek for a supreme instance of fertility, we find it in the religion of Nazareth, which seems to enjoy perpetual seed-time and perpetual harvest.

The question is one of more than historical interest: Is Judaism likewise a religion capable of bearing fresh corn and wine and oil for the nations? We know that both Christianity and Islam are developments of the Jewish idea,—the Semitic development (Islam) carrying out its monotheistic doctrine in all its rigidity, but losing somewhat on the moral and spiritual side; the Aryan development (Christianity) abandoning the strictly monotheistic doctrine, but carrying far forward the moral and the spiritual part. But both these Banyan-like branches have struck root for themselves, and their growth can no longer be treated as derived from the trunk of Judaism. Our problem is, Can Judaism further develop itself along its own lines? Or is it (as generally believed) destined to permanent immobility, with no possible future before it save gradual dismemberment and decay? Shall we best liken it to Abraham’s oak at Mamre, whose leaf has not failed after three thousand years of sun and storm, and when the very levin-bolt of heaven has blasted its crown,—or to the hewn and painted mast of some laden argosy wherein float the fortunes of Israel?

There are, it would appear, three parties now existing among modern Jews. There is, first, the large Orthodox party, which holds by the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament and the authority of the Talmud.[14]

Secondly, there is the party commonly called that of Reformed Jews, which separated about forty years ago from the Orthodox by a schism analogous to that which cut off the Free Kirk from the Kirk of Scotland. The _raisons d’être_ of this reform were certain questions of ritual (the older ritual having fallen into neglect) and the relinquishment by the reforming party of the authority of the Talmud. The progress so effected occasioned great heart-burnings,—now happily extinguished,—and proceeded no further than these very moderate reforms.[15]

Lastly, there is a third Jewish party, existing chiefly in Germany and America, and numbering a few members among the younger generations in England. For convenience’ sake, I shall distinguish it from the older Reformed party by calling it the party of the New Reform, or of Broad Church Jews, the analogy between its attitude towards Orthodox Judaism and that of the late lamented Dean Stanley and his friends to the Church of England being singularly close.

The attitude even of the Orthodox and older Reformed Jews (alike for our present purpose) is, theoretically, not wholly unprogressive, not necessarily purely tribal. They have admitted principles inconsistent with stagnant tribalism. They believe that, though the _ceremonialism_ of Judaism is for Jews alone, yet the mission of Judaism is to spread through all the nations its great central _doctrine_ of the Unity of God. As Philipsohn (who, it is said, has since somewhat receded from his position) observed in his Lectures so far back as 1847:—

Judaism has never declared itself to be in its specific form the religion of all mankind, but has asserted itself to be the religion of all mankind in and by the religious idea.... Talmudism itself admits that he even who no longer observes the law, but who utters as his confession of faith the words, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Eternal is One,” may be considered still to be a Jew. _Development of the Religious Idea_, p. 256.

The saying of the Talmud, “The pious among all nations shall have a place in the world to come,” has become a stock quotation, and has been of the utmost value to modern Jewish orthodoxy. Thus even this most conservative party among the Jews is not without a certain expansive principle. It must be admitted, however, that it does little or nothing to make that principle practically efficacious, and is content to wait for the advent of Messiah to convert the nations by miracle without any trouble to Jews to strive to enlighten them beforehand. Considering what the Jews for ages have had to bear from those who vouchsafed to try to convert _them_, we may pardon this lack of zeal for proselytism as far from unnatural; yet the consequences have been deplorable. He who holds a precious truth concerning eternal things, and fails to feel it to be (as Mrs. Browning says) “like bread at sacrament,” to be passed on to those beside him, loses his right to it, and much of his profit in it. It is “treasure hid in a field.” The attitude is anti-social and misanthropic of a people who practically say to their neighbors: “We possess the most precious of all truths, of which we are the divinely commissioned guardians and witnesses. But we do not intend to make the smallest effort to share that truth with you, and generations of you may go to the grave without it for all we care. We are passive witnesses, not active apostles. By and by, the Messiah will appear, and convert all who are alive in his time, whether they will or not; but, for the present, Christendom is joined to idols, and we shall let it alone.” The faith which speaks thus stands self-condemned. If a creed be not aggressive and proselytizing, like Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, it confesses either mistrust of itself or else misanthropic indifference to the welfare of mankind. Thus the Orthodox and the elder Reformed Jews have tacitly pronounced their own sentence.

Turn we now from these to the new Reformation. This last is a development of Judaism, truly _on its own lines_, but yet extending far beyond anything contemplated by the elder bodies. To measure it aright, we must cast back a glance over the path which Judaism traversed in earlier times, and note how completely this new and vast stride is a continuance of that march towards higher and wider religious truth.

From the earliest conception of Jahveh as the Tribal God,—a conception which even Kuenen admits to be native to the race of Israel, and untraceable to any other people,—from this conception, which plainly assumed the existence of other and rival gods of neighboring nations, it was an enormous step in advance to pass to the idea of One only Lord of all the earth, whose House should be a “House of prayer for all nations.”

Still vaster was the progress from anthropomorphic and morally imperfect ideas of the character of the tribal God to the adoration of Isaiah’s “High and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity,” who dwells in the high and holy place with the pure in heart and the contrite.

Again, there was made a bound forward by Judaism when the earlier simple secularism and disbelief of, or indifference to, a future world vanished before the belief in Immortality which grew up in spite of the teachings of Antigonus and Sadok, and (after the Dispersion) never faded out again altogether.

And finally, with the development of the Prophetic spirit, Worship assumed more its true forms of praise, confession of sin, and thanksgiving; and, at the fall of Jerusalem, the bloody sacrifices (long limited to the sacred enclosure) came to an end forever amid the smoking ruins.

These were truly great steps of progress made by Israel of old; but the last of them left the nation to carry into its sorrowful exile an intolerable burden of ceremonialism and dusty superstitions, whereof the Talmud is now the lumber-room, and possessed also by an unhappy demon of anti-social pride, which forbade it to extend to or accept from other nations the right hand of human brotherhood. The Jews did not go out from Jerusalem as the little band of Christian missionaries had gone, eager to scatter their new wealth of truth among the nations, and, though stoned and crucified by those whom they sought to bless, yet ever after by their children’s children to be revered and canonized. The Jews went out as misers of truth, holding their full bags of treasure hid in their breasts. Nor in the ages following the Dispersion, while Christianity diverged further and further from pure Theism, and through Mariolatry and Hagiolatry sank well-nigh to polytheism and idolatry, do we ever once hear of an attempt by any Jewish teacher, even by such a man as Maimonides, to call back the wandering nations by proclaiming in their ears the “schema Israel”—“THE LORD YOUR GOD THE ETERNAL IS ONE.” Before the expulsion from Palestine, for a brief period, Judaism (as one of its bitterest enemies has remarked) showed promise of becoming a proselytizing creed, “when, under the influence of Greek philosophy and other liberalizing influences, it was tending from the condition of a tribal to that of a universal creed. But Plato succumbed to the Rabbins. Judaism fell back for eighteen centuries into rigid tribalism, and, as Lord Beaconsfield cynically said of it, has ever since ‘no more sought to make converts than the House of Lords.’”[16]

At last the long pause in the progress of Judaism, considered as a religion, seems drawing to an end; and we may hail its present advance as the continuance of that noble march which the Jewish race began to the music of Miriam’s timbrel.

This last step forward of Reformed Judaism consists, according to its latest interpreter, in “the struggle now consciously and now unconsciously maintained to emancipate the Jewish faith from every vestige of tribalism, and to enshrine its wholly catholic doctrines in a wholly catholic form.” This end is to be pursued through the “DENATIONALIZATION of the Jewish religion, by setting aside all the rules and ceremonies which do not possess an essentially religious character or are maintained merely for the sake of the national, as distinct from the religious, unity.”

The following are the modes in which this programme may be followed out:—

1. Reformed Judaism abandons the Messianic hope. It neither desires nor expects the coming of Messiah, and the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine as a nation it regards as retrogression toward tribalism.[17] 2. It rejects the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament, nor does it recognize the perfection and immutability of the law contained within the Pentateuch. 3. It rejects the theory of a Divine tradition recorded in the Mischna, and does not admit the authority of the Talmudic laws. 4. It puts aside, as no longer binding, all the legal, hygienic, and agrarian ordinances of the Pentateuch, together with the laws relating to marriages and to the Levites. 5. It cuts down the feasts and fasts to the Sabbath, the Passover, and four others. 6. It adopts the vernacular of each country for a larger or smaller part of the service of the synagogue, instead of retaining the whole in Hebrew.

Besides these six great changes, there are two others looming in the distance. Reformed Judaism still regards the rite of circumcision as binding, though several distinguished reformers (notably Geiger) have recommended that proselytes should not be required to adopt it. Of the change of the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday, I am informed that the transference of the holy day has already been made by one synagogue in Berlin, which holds its services on the Sunday, and by many independent Jewish men of business; and that it is very much desired in some other quarters. The difficulty attendant on this change obviously is: that it would prove so favorable to the interests of Jews in a secular sense that, if adopted, the charge of worldly motives is certain to be brought against those who advocate it.