In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference

by Annie F. Johnston

"They may seem invulnerable to arguments," he answered, "but nobody is proof against a warm, personal interest. Ah, Miss Hallam, it seems a terrible thing to me. The Church will make sacrifices, will cross the seas, will overcome almost any obstacle to send the gospel to China or to Africa, anywhere but to the Jews at their elbows. O, of course, I know there are a few Hebrew missions, scattered here and there through the large cities, and a few earnest souls are devoting their entire energy to the work. But suppose every Christian in the country became an evangel to the little community of Jews within the radius of his influence. Suppose a practical, prayerful, individual effort were made to show them Christ, with the same zeal you expend in sending 'the old story' to the Hottentots. What would be the result? O, if I had waited for a grown person to speak to me about it, I might have waited until the day of my death. I was restless. I was dissatisfied. I felt that I needed something more than my creed could give me. For what is Judaism now? I read an answer not long ago: 'A religion of sacrifice, to which, for eighteen centuries, no sacrifice has been possible; a religion of the Passover and the Day of Atonement, on which, for well-nigh two millenniums, no lamb has been slain and no atonement offered; a sacerdotal religion, with only the shadow of a priesthood; a religion of a temple which has no temple more; its altar is quenched, its ashes scattered, no longer kindling any enthusiasm, nor kindled by any hope.'[A] No man ever took me by the hand and told me about the peace I have now. No man ever shared with me his hope, or pointed out the way for me to find it. If it had not been for the blessed guiding influence of a little child, my hungry heart might still be crying out unsatisfied."

He went on to repeat several conversations he had had with men of his own race, to show her how this indifference of Christians was reckoned against them as a glaring inconsistency by the Jews. Almost as if some one had spoken the words to her, she seemed to hear the condemnation, "I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat. I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me not in. Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not to me."

Strange as it may seem, Bethany's interpretation of that Scripture had always been in a temporal sense. More than once, when a child, she had watched her mother feed some poor beggar, with the virtuous feeling that that condemnation could not apply to the Hallam family. But now Lessing's impassioned appeal had awakened a different thought. Who so hungered as those who, reaching out for bread, grasped either the stones of a formal ritualism or the abandoned hope of prophecy unfulfilled? Who such "strangers within the gates" of the nations as this race without a country? From the brick-kilns of Pharaoh to the willows of Babylon, from the Ghetto of Rome to the fagot-fires along the Rhine, from Spanish cruelties to English extortions, they had been driven—exiles and aliens. The New World had welcomed them. The New World had opened all its avenues to them. Only from the door of Christian society had they turned away, saying, "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in."

In the pause that followed, Bethany's heart went out in an earnest prayer: "O God, in the great day of thy judgment, let not that condemnation be mine. Only send me some opportunity, show me some way whereby I may lead even one of the least among them to the world's Redeemer!"

Mr. Marion came back from his interview, looking at his watch as he did so. It was so near time for services to begin at the tent, that he did not resume his seat.

"We may never meet again, Mr. Lessing," said Bethany, holding out her hand as she bade him good-bye. "So I want to tell you before I go, what an impression this conversation has made upon me. It has aroused an earnest desire to be the means of carrying the hope that comforts me, to some one among your people."

"You will succeed," he said, looking into her earnest upturned face. Then he added softly, in Hebrew, the old benediction of an olden day—"Peace be unto you."

All that day, after the sunrise meeting, David Herschel had been with Major Herrick, going over the battle-fields, and listening to personal reminiscences of desperate engagements. A monument was to be erected on the spot where nearly all the major's men had fallen in one of the most hotly-contested battles of the war. He had come down to help locate the place.

"It's a very different reception they are giving us now," remarked the major, as they drove through the city.

Epworth League colors were flying in all directions. Every street gleamed with the white and red banners of the North, crossed with the white and gold of the South.