generally when and where they feel assured of freedom and security,
is suggested by the history of their race in America. It is certain
that the leading Rabbins of that country would be regarded as
perilously latitudinarian by their strict co-religionists of Europe.
It is a significant unique fact that the high family of Adlers has
produced a President of the Free Religious Association, which is
made up of theists and agnostics developed out of Unitarianism and
Transcendentalism. But, furthermore, the leading Rabbins, Lilienthal,
Wise, and Sonnenschein, are instances of the advanced Rationalism which
pervades the Jewish body in America. These scholarly and eloquent
Rabbins freely fraternise with the anti-supernaturalistic teachers
of other antecedents than their own. It is pretty certain that they
do not look for the advent of any personal Messiah, and never dream
of any restoration of their race to power in Palestine. They are not
theocratic in politics, but republican, and regard America as the real
Jerusalem of their race. Such is my conviction, based not only upon the
works of the gentlemen I have mentioned, but upon personal acquaintance
with them; and I cannot doubt that, whatever may be their dissent from
much that is written in these pages, they would confirm my opinion as
to the tendency of the people of Jewish origin in America. Jews of
the Old World are somewhat in the condition of the rich man who, when
reproached for a stinted charity, said that he began life poor, and had
never got the chill of poverty out of his bones; these Jews have vivid
traditions of persecution, and have not yet got the chill of fear out
of their bones. Recent events in Germany and Russia may even prolong
this timidity; the ferocious reply to their attempt to mingle in the
society and politics of the world may set back for a little their
liberation. But the free heart and mind of Europe is with them, and
will be felt not only in England but on the Continent. The unbinding of
Ahasuerus is part of the civilised revolution which can never really go
backward.
Shakspeare was the first to show the Jew to be a man. Lessing was the
first to show that a Jew might be as good a man as a Christian, the
indispensability of Christ to excellence being quite ignored. Thus the
seventeenth century had its gospel for the Jew, and the eighteenth
century had its gospel. But in essence the gospel according to Lessing
was not so high as that of the master at whose feet he learned it.
Shakspeare had raised up the standard of Manhood, and in its light
Judaism and Christianism are seen to be comparatively small things,
and their contentious tempers proof that they are no longer religious
in any pure sense. Lessing, even in his famous apologue of the Three
Rings which a father gave to his equally beloved sons--similitudes of
the Jewish, Moslem and Christian religions--makes the wise judge end
the dispute as to which is the true ring by consecrating all three.
The true ring, which the fond father had caused to be copied in two
others, so that neither son might be disappointed, had the power to
draw the love of all on its owner. But it also carried the right to
sovereignty; and this advantage so overbore the former virtue that each
son, with his ring, was found to love himself alone. The Judge advises
them to be each content with his ring:
“Let each of you comport him in such wise
As love unbribed commands; let each resolve
To show the world that in the ring he wears
He holds the prize, its virtues being shown
To Man in acts of justice, meekness, mercy,
To God in thoughts of love and heartfelt trust.”
But the nineteenth century should transmit to the twentieth a nobler
gospel for Jew, Moslem, and Christian than that. Let each of them see
that his ring is a survival from the ancient chain that fettered him
to his several rock of superstition; that so long as he holds faith in
it, no transmutation of it into gold, no decoration with opal, can make
it other than a talisman to bind him, and isolate him from the real
work of creating a Man able to be the providence of this world. Let
the rings, not only of Israel, but of Christianity, and of all sects,
be thrown into the flames of human love, that there may be formed a
coronet for the Mother whose patient all-loving face poetry and science
are revealing. “In this principle,” said Clifford, of the evolution of
organic from inorganic things, “we must recognise the mother of life,
and especially of human life, powerful enough to subdue the elements,
and yet always working gently against them; biding her time in the
whole expanse of heaven, to make the highest cosmos out of inorganic
chaos; the actor, not of all the actions of living things, but only of
the good actions; for a bad action is one by which the organism tends
to be less organic, and acts for a time as if inorganic. To this mother
of life, personifying herself in the good works of humanity, it seems
to me we may fitly address a splendid hymn of Mr. Swinburne’s:
“Mother of man’s time-travelling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
“Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.
* * * * *
“All old grey histories hiding thy clear features,
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men’s tales,
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures,
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.
“Thine hands, without election or exemption,
Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife,
O thou, the resurrection and redemption,
The godhead, and the manhood, and the life!”
XX.
THREE WITNESSES.
In Prague there is an ancient Synagogue, the interior of which is black
with the mould and dust of seven centuries. There is a tradition that
at some unknown point in it the holy name of Jahve is written, and, for
fear of its obliteration, no cleansing or sweeping, however slight,
has been permitted, until now the Synagogue has become a show-place
of accumulated dirt, which tourists pass through with torches. This
ancient structure is but a too faithful symbol of temples which
preserve the superstitions of ages through fear that, if some holy name
or creed be touched, religion and morality will suffer.
Early in the last generation three Jewish boys--Israel, Jacob, and
Henoch--were seated together in this Synagogue on a Saturday morning,
awaiting the beginning of service. They were of different families, but
playmates. No person was near them, and, oblivious of the traditional
prohibitions, they began to amuse themselves by scraping off with their
knives an inch of the black mould, here and there, to see what wood or
stone was beneath. The Rabbi, happening to pass at the time, cried out
with horror at the sacrilege, and said, “The curse of Heaven may fall
on you for that act!”
The terrified lads put up their knives. Some neighbours who heard the
voice of the angry Rabbi, but not his exact words, reported that he
had said, “May the curse of Heaven fall on you for that act!” And this
was the form in which the story was whispered about. Gradually a small
saga grew up among the Jews of Prague about these three boys. They
were regarded with an evil eye, under which their prospects suffered
blight; they were supposed to be under some mysterious doom, they were
avoided, and their families suffered much distress. The venerable
Rabbi, repenting of his hasty words, tried to disabuse the minds of his
congregation as to what he had said; but he was unable to undo what
had been done. As the three advanced towards youth, the prejudices
against them, and the belief that a doom overhung them, made their
lives so miserable, that they desired to leave Prague altogether, and
their parents thought this the best course. The families were in good
circumstances, and the young men went off fairly well educated and
with some means. They resolved to emigrate to different regions.
Jacob went to Northern Germany. He entered a university there and
succeeded in his studies. Animated by the hope of doing so well in
life that his parents might ultimately have the happiness of seeing
the prejudices of their neighbours disappear, he presently excelled
all other students. He became a favourite with the professors. But
this excited the jealousy of other students. These conspired against
him, and one of their best swordsmen was appointed to pick a quarrel
with him. The quarrel came; Jacob was challenged; in the duel he
received an ugly wound, which deprived him of one eye, disfigured him,
and injured his health. These troubles gradually affected his nerves
to such an extent that his mind was partially affected. He began to
suspect that there might be some truth in the belief of the neighbours
in Prague, that he had fallen under a divine curse for having cleaned
an inch of the old Synagogue-wall. This dread grew upon him to such
an extent that, from having been a courageous youth, he became timid.
Whenever he went out at night he seemed to be confronted by the student
with whom he had fought the duel. He began to be looked upon as an
uncanny person by the common people in the city where he dwelt. Some
even hustled him on the street, and the Christian boys sometimes threw
refuse at the miserable man. He was one evening purposely tripped by
some one and suffered a severe fall, which lamed him. Amid the shadows
that darkened his room, which had gradually become dingy through
poverty, he imagined that, like the patriarch after whom he was named,
he had wrestled with a dark phantom, which, however, had prevailed
against him. The curse seemed to be fixed upon him irremissibly. The
accumulated filth of the old Synagogue of Prague had carried with
it the accumulated superstitions of ages; his childish attempt to
clear away a little of that visible mould had been vain, and he was
now equally helpless to free any smallest space of his own mind from
hereditary beliefs in dooms, spectres, spells. Thus he wandered,
limping, miserable, amid Christian scoffs and Jewish suspicions, and so
he wanders this day.
The second of the lads that left Prague, Israel, came to England, where
he was well educated. He thought over this Prague incident carefully,
and came to feel a certain contempt for a Synagogue which so jealously
cherished all its dirt. He found it written in the Talmud that “next
to godliness is cleanliness,” and began to perceive that the filth
he had tried to scrape off was a type of the irrational usages and
petty exactions which had overlaid the religion of his race. He had
united himself to a Synagogue in London which was kept fair and
beautiful; but, as time wore on, he found that around the good hearts
and fine minds of the English Jews there were walls on which had
gathered the repulsive dust and dirt of ages transmitted from ancient
Syria. So Israel resolved that he would make good the promise of his
boyish knife, and clear away some of the spiritual mould from English
Judaism. His attempts at reform awakened the ire of Wardens, the
hostility of Rabbins, and the opposition of a wealthy Semitic caste.
Israel still believed in Jahve, and in the fundamental doctrines of
the Jewish faith; he believed that if Judaism could be freed from its
antiquarian walls it must lead the world. But he struggled in vain for
years to secure from the chiefs of the Synagogues any modification
of their usages. Furthermore, his efforts in this direction began to
tell seriously upon his personal prospects. He had studied law, been
admitted to the bar, and for a time found some employment from his
co-religionists; but after it was discovered that he was endeavouring
to interfere with the traditional usages of the Synagogue, he soon
found himself without clients, and with but a few friends--these being
of Christian families.
One evening Israel went to a theatre in London to witness the
performance of the _Merchant of Venice_. He was much impressed by an
incident of the Bible used by Shylock as a parable, wherein Jacob stuck
wands before the ewes in breeding-time, and secured parti-coloured
lambs, which, according to Laban’s agreement, were all to fall to his
(Jacob’s) part. Shylock says:
“This was a way to thrive, and he was blest;
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.”
The Christian Antonio must needs accept the “holy witness” of a book
infallible to him and Shylock alike, and says that the result so good
for Jacob was “sway’d and fashioned by the hand of Heaven.” Israel went
away from the theatre to his poor room, and bethought him that, great
as was the wealth and power of a few Jews, the parti-coloured lambs had
somehow fallen to the Christian lot. Was the “hand of Heaven” in this?
If the declaration of Jahve of old that his approval should be manifest
in blessings, his disapproval in cursings, were faithful, could there
be any doubt where the divine approbation rested in England? Was
Houndsditch the seal of Jahve’s benediction on his people? or was not
Belgravia rather the expression of his smile? Houndsditch and Belgravia
alike appealed to Jahve; to which had he sent the multitude of spring
lambs and the plenteous wool?
The germ that fell into Israel’s mind at the theatre gradually grew.
He presently found that the traditions of Judaism attained their
real power and glory in Christianity. In the end he was baptized; he
was speedily surrounded by troops of friends. He possessed brilliant
powers, and became eminent in literary and political life. Even his
former co-religionists were inclined to utilise him, now that he no
longer attempted to use his pen-knife on their mouldy customs. He
was able to serve them in many ways, they were willing to repay his
services; and, thus, assisted by the race which gained prestige through
his genius without the danger of it, and by the Christian community
which saw in him a triumph of Christ, he became a great minister of
State and a favourite in Palaces. And such he is to this day.
The third of the three youths who left Prague, Henoch, wandered
restlessly through Asia and Europe--then came to France. He also was a
man of brilliant powers, and for some time kept up his friendship with
young Israel in London. In the course of their correspondence, the idea
arose in him also of trying to reform the Synagogue to which he had
attached himself in Paris. He failed in the same way, but the effect on
his mind was different. He could not recognise a direction from Jahve
in the superior thrift of Christendom. He had heard that in America the
Jews were in every way more liberal and progressive, and he resolved to
emigrate thither. For this purpose he engaged a passage, and repaired
to Havre to take his steamer.
On his way to the wharf in Havre, Henoch was passing a small
book-stall, when his attention was arrested by the appearance of the
bookseller. This was an extremely aged Jew, with long white beard,
deep-set eyes, and a queer, antique figure. He sat beside his little
stand of dingy fourth-hand books, holding a small volume in his
bony fingers, which he perused attentively. Henoch approached him
and, speaking in Hebrew, asked him what books he had suitable for a
traveller. The old man asked him whither he was travelling, and having
received the reply, said: “Ah, that, too, was my dream; but I never got
farther than this. I am too old now--too old and too poor--and must
leave the New World hope for our younger men. But I sit here, and read
about that land of promise, and my dim old eyes follow every ship that
sails that way.” Henoch asked to look at the book the aged Jew had
been reading. It was an old Spanish book--Herrera’s _History of the
Indies_. Israel knew the language, and proposed to buy the book. The
aged bookseller was somewhat reluctant but finally said: “It is the
story of the discovery of the New World to which you are going; take
it, with an old man’s good will; and may you carry to America something
better than those Spaniards did, who tried to plant there every evil
the Old World had produced!”
On board the steamer Henoch read this book, and one narrative in it
haunted his memory. It related that when the Spaniards had taken
possession of the newly-discovered island they called Hispaniola--now
Cuba--they began to trade in the Indians, who were shipped off as
slaves to various regions. The island found itself in want of Indians,
and having heard that the neighbouring Lucayan Isles were full of
them, asked permission of King Ferdinand to allow them to bring these
Lucayans over to Hispaniola, “that they might enjoy the preaching and
political customs” which they (the Spaniards) had introduced. Having
received this permission, the Spaniards went over to the Lucayans and
told those simple islanders that they had come from the paradise of
their ancestors; they said that all whom they (the Lucayans) had loved
and lost by death were now in a happy abode, enjoying perfect repose
and every felicity; and that their ships were ready to bear them to
that happy land. The poor Lucayans crowded with laughter and joy to the
Spanish ships; the light of the Blessed Isle shone upon their faces.
They sailed away from their island home, where they had known only
peace and friendship, and were soon all working in dark mines under the
slave-driver’s scourge. The kid was seethed in its mother’s milk.
Henoch read and re-read this tragic history, and looked out over the
sea westward. What a fearful fate was that of hearts that followed a
dream of paradise which led them into slavery and despair! But slavery,
what is it? Is it only the subjection of one will to another? or
bondage of the body to toil for others? May there not be islanders,
even amid continents, following dreams of paradise, and of clasping
their ancestral dead, into spiritual slavery, into a living entombment
among skeletons and simulacra of things for ever turned to dust?
In the vision of Henoch there arose a memory of the ancient Synagogue
at Prague. His eyes filled with tears as he recalled the dear and
tender faces that he had seen there. His kind father, his gentle
mother, the good-hearted neighbours, the once happy circle of
playmates--how fair and peaceful that Lucaya had been! But it was all
at the mercy of a bit of dirt come down from the thirteenth century,
consecrated by awe of four letters of a dead language. Under that spell
kindly hearts had turned to stone, suspicions arisen, fear and dread,
and from the ruin of a happy home he had been sent to wander through
the world. The dream of an ancestral paradise had made that blackened
Synagogue as dark a mine as any in which the discoverers of the New
World set the islanders to toil; it had imprisoned the Jewish genius
and chained the Jewish heart.
One morning, when his thought was full of these reflections, and the
book received from the ancient Jew at Havre was open before him, Henoch
caught his first sight of the New World, radiant in the sunshine. He
resolved that into that land of fresh opportunity he would carry no
dogma or custom which rested upon tradition or authority. In that land
he saw the human race given a fresh opportunity, and he also would
begin again. The Old World had followed its dreams of heaven through
massacres and martyrdoms into a dreary and endless routine of wrong,
which found its fit symbol in that fable his experience could well
interpret, of an eternal Wanderer.
His own race had been mainly responsible for that fatal misdirection of
the energies and enthusiasm of the Old World which, had it not sought
a Paradise among the dead, might have made the earth a paradise for
the living. Now he would consecrate his powers to persuade the people
of the human race, to which in America he might belong, to burn behind
them all these holy ships of Zion in which the Past might be imported,
and to receive the Past only as it might be able to minister to
science, or might come in confessions of the moral ruin it had wrought,
as a warning for the new Age.
In the New World, Henoch began his work of founding societies whose
religion is to perform divine service for mankind, to make every day
eternal, and to steadily transfigure man with the shining light of
science and pure raiment of a renovated world. The wanderings of Henoch
have changed to unhasting, unresting progressions, traceable in fair
transformations. His eloquence, which has learned every sweet and
subtle tone of the Past, and caught the brave accents of hope, wins
the Christian from his cross and the Jew from his altar. He is still a
welcome Voice in the cities, sierras, savannas, eldorados, crying THE
KINGDOM OF MAN IS AT HAND.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Some excellent remarks on this subject, and historical
illustrations, are contained in an article in the late _Theological
Review_ (July, 1871) on the “Nero Saga,” by W. M. W. Call.
[2] The _Heimskringla_. Translated by Samuel Laing. Longmans, 1844.
Vol. i., p. 225.
[3] Macaulay’s “History of England,” ch. viii. Fourth edition.
[4] “La Morte d’Arthur.” Compiled by Sir Thomas Mallory (Conybeare’s
edition). Moxon, 1868, p. 404. The Cornish legend was that Arthur would
return to drive the Saxons from Britain. Similar stories are told of
Sir Gawaine, Ogier, and others.
[5] “Demonology and Devil-lore.” (Index.) See Sir G. W. Cox, “Mythology
of the Aryan Nations.” Keightley, “Fairy Mythology,” i. 74, _sq._
Folk-lore Record, ii. 1, _sq._
[6] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i. 318.
[7] Haug’s Essays, etc., p. 277.
[8] Max Müller’s _Science of Language_, vol. ii. p. 563.
[9] See the statement by one of the interlocutors in Dr. Kalisch’s
admirable work _Path and Goal_, p. 348. (Longmans, 1880.)
[10] See Ewald’s _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 353 (Russell
Martineau’s Translation, p. 264, _sq._). For traditions concerning
Seth, see also my _Demonology and Devil-lore_, as per Index.
[11] Pierotti; _Customs and Traditions of Palestine_.
[12] When the abyss between biblical and other mythology has ceased to
be so convenient, perhaps there may be traced some connection between
the ravens that fed Elias and those birds of Odin that circle around
Raven’s Hill where Barbarossa sleeps; and also between Elias and our
folk-tales of Æolus.
[13] It would be an interesting question, but one that cannot be
discussed here, to consider how far the idea of eternal Wanderers may
have been primarily connected with the ever-returning heavenly bodies.
Ewald and Goldziher agree that the years of Enoch’s visible life, 365,
indicate the solar year. Ewald thinks he was probably a god of the New
Year.
[14] See Professor Drummond’s “The Jewish Messiah,” etc. In Haug’s
_Essays_ will be found a full account of Yima and his earthly paradise.
[15] The blindness ascribed to Teiresias presents a curious coincidence
with that attributed to Lamech in Legendary Art, which leads to his
accidentally killing Cain with an arrow. In both cases the significance
probably is that of one who is blind to immediate consequences while
seeing or carrying out the decrees of Fate.
[16] Mrs. Jameson (_Sacred and Legendary Art_, i., 208) has given fully
the legend of St. James. In the year 936 he appeared to King Ramirez
in Spain promising him a victory over the Moors, and, on the following
day, he (St. James) appeared at the head of the army on a milk-white
horse, when sixty thousand Moors were slain; hence the Spanish war-cry
“Santiago.”
[17] The sacred footprints of Christ are also pointed out on the Mount
of Olives, and at Poitiers, Arles, Fécamp, Rheims, and Soissons.
[18] Herbelot: _Bibl. Orient._ iii. p. 607 (ref. by Grässe).
[19] A curious instance of the supremacy of the artist over the
man, when Goethe’s horror of dogs is remembered. Goethe threw up
his connection with Weimar Theatre because Carl August insisted on
admitting, to ‘perform’ on the stage, the animal which this poem
introduces into Paradise.
[20] This legend may, in turn, have helped to create the figure of Don
Juan, the unsaintly Wanderer whose story is possibly related to the
mythology we are considering. There are interesting suggestions in Le
Sage’s _Diable Boiteux_, but the figure of Don Juan awaits further
study.
[21] The present grotto was built in 1879. The old one, which I saw
the year before, had on its ceiling faint frescoes of the sun, moon,
and stars--recalling the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus who
turned their backs on Divus Cæsar, saying they would worship him alone
who made the sun, moon, and stars. The angel Gabriel, who led them into
Paradise, guided them mythologically to Touraine, of old called “the
Paradise of France.”
[22] This legend has been discussed by Mr. Call, in an essay already
referred to (p. 30). From references kindly supplied by him, I incline
to believe it of Eastern origin. It is mentioned by Tacitus (Hist. ii.
81), and by the Sibylline Oracles (iv.), at nearly the same period.
Suetonius, Commodianus, Victorious, and Sulpicias Severus, were
familiar with the story that Nero was still alive. Neander, Merivale,
and Canon Farrar, connect the legend with the formation of the theory
of an Antichrist.