JUDAISM
Judaism, too, is so rich in spiritual treasures that I hesitate to single out more than a very few jewels. It is plain, however, that it needs to be reformed, and that this need is present in many of the traditional forms which enshrine so noble a spiritual experience. The Sabbath, for instance, is as the apple of his eye to every true-hearted Jew; he addresses it in his spiritual songs as a Princess. And he does well; the title Princess belongs of right to 'Shabbath.' For the name—be it said in passing—is probably a corruption of a title of the Mother-goddess Ashtart, and it would, I think, have been no blameworthy act if the religious transformers of Israelite myths had made a special myth, representing Shabbath as a man. When the Messiah comes, I trust that He will do this. For 'the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.'
The faith of the Messiah is another of Israel's treasures. Or rather, perhaps I should say, the faith in the Messiahs, for one Messiah will not meet the wants of Israel or the world. The Messiah, or the Being-like-a-man (Dan. vii. 13), is a supernatural Being, who appears on earth when he is wanted, like the Logos. We want Messiah badly now; specially, I should say, we Christians want 'great-souled ones' (Mahatmas), who can 'guide us into all the truth' (John xvi. 13). That they have come in the past, I doubt not. God could not have left his human children in the lurch for all these centuries. One thousand Jews of Tihran are said to have accepted Baha'ullah as the expected Messiah. They were right in what they affirmed, and only wrong in what they denied. And are we not all wrong in virtually denying the Messiahship of women-leaders like Kurratu'l 'Ayn; at least, I have only met with this noble idea in a work of Fiona Macleod.