Christ reached his hearers through his intimate knowledge of them. He never talked to shepherds of fishing-nets, nor to vine-dressers of flocks. He gave the same water of life to the woman at Jacob's well that he bestowed on the ruler who came to him by night. Yet how differently he presented it to the ignorant Samaritan and the learned Nicodemus.
To this end, then, study these creeds and systems; for instance, the unity of God, clung to alike by the Hebrew persistently reiterating his Shemang, and the Moslem crying "God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet!"
Follow this belief in the Unity, as it goes deeply channeling its way through centuries of Semitic thought, until it enters the very life-blood. You can trace its influence even down into the early Christian Church, in the hot disputes of Arius and his followers, at the Council of Nicea.
Not until you comprehend how idolatrous the worship of the Trinity seems to a Jew, can you understand what a stumbling-block lies between him and the acceptance of his Messiah.
You will find this study of Judaism reaching out like a banyan-tree, striking root and branching again and again in so many different places that it seems that it must certainly, by some one of its manifold ramifications, shadow every great problem and people.
In the first conception of this story it was purposed to place considerable emphasis on a number of things that have been left untouched, especially the colonization schemes of the philanthropic Barons Hirsch and De Rothschild, and the prophecies concerning the return of the Jews to Palestine.
But prophecy, while always a most interesting and profitable subject for research and study, leads into an unmapped country of speculation. Many an enthusiast, not recognizing that on God's great calendar a thousand years are but as a day, has attempted to solve the mysteries of Revelations by the same numerical system with which he calculates his assets and liabilities. As we examine this subject, we must not forget the vast difference between our finite yardsticks, and the reed of the angel who measured the city.
God grant that, as the tree thrown into the stream of Marah changed its bitter waters into wholesome, life-giving sweetness, so this study of Israel, earnestly and honestly pursued, may turn all bitterness of prejudice into the broad, sweet spirit of true brotherhood!