In his terrible grief a mounted soldier brought him a young, tender Christian child, an orphan girl, and Nathan took it, bore it to his couch, kissed it, flung himself upon his knees, and thanked God that the lost seven had been replaced by at least one. This Christian maiden he loved with all the warmth of a fatherly heart, and educated her in a strictly conscientious manner. Not one religion in preference to another, still less his own, did he instil into the young soul of Recha, or Blanche, but only the doctrines of pure fear of God, ideal virtue, and morality. Such was the representative of Judaism.
How did the representative of Christianity behave? The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, with his church, was tolerated in the Mahometan city by the magnanimous Sultan Saladin, by virtue of a solemnly ratified treaty, meditates treacherous plans against the sultan, concocts intrigues against him:
"But what is villainy in human eyes
May, in the sight of God, the patriarch thinks,
Not be villainy."
For Nathan, he desires to kindle a pyre, because he has fostered, loved, and raised to a lovely, spiritual maiden, a forsaken Christian child. Without the compassion of the Jew, the child would have perished:
"That's nothing! The Jew must still be burnt."
Daya, another representative of Church Christianity, who knows Recha's Christian origin, has misgivings when she sees the Christian child basking in the warm love of a Jew. She is won over from these scruples by costly presents, but she still contemplates depriving Nathan of the most precious object to which his soul clings, even though danger should thereby befall him.
The Templar, Leon of Filnek, represents yet another phase of Christianity. A soldier and at the same time a cleric, who, spared by Saladin although he had broken his word, rescues Recha, the supposed Jewish maiden; he behaves with Christian insolence towards Nathan, speaking roughly and harshly to him, whilst the latter is pouring forth heartfelt gratitude for the rescue of his adopted daughter. Then, gradually, through the wonderful power of love, the Templar lays aside the coarse, hateful garb of Christian prejudice. In his veins there flows Mahometan blood. Only the holy simplicity of the friar Bonafides combines human kindness with monastic ecclesiasticism; but he knows only one duty—obedience—and at the command of the fanatically cruel Patriarch would commit the most horrible crimes.
These lessons Lessing preached from his theatre pulpit to the obdurate minds of the followers of Christ. The wise Jew, Nathan—Mendelssohn—has arrived at the highest level of human sympathy; while the best Christian, the Templar, every cultivated Christian—the Nicolais, the Abts, the Herders—have yet to free themselves from their thick-skinned prejudices, to attain to that height. It is a delusion to claim the possession of the one true religion and the only means of salvation. Who possesses the real ring? How can the real one be detected from the false? Only by meekness, heartfelt tolerance, true benevolence, and most fervent devotion to God; in short, by all those qualities which the official Christianity of the time did not display, and which were perfectly realized in Mendelssohn.
In every way Lessing scourged fossilized, persecuting Christianity, and glorified Judaism through its chief representative. As if this splendid drama, the beautiful first-fruits of German poetry, was to belong to the Jews, although given to the world by a Christian poet, a son of Israel aided its production. Lessing, besieged by theological foes, and fighting against dire necessity, would not have been able to complete it, if, during its composition, he had not been enabled to live without anxiety. He required a loan, and found no helper among the Christians. Moses Wessely, in Hamburg, the brother of the neo-Hebraic poet, Naphtali Wessely, who afterwards made a name for himself in Jewish history, advanced the desired sum, although he was not a wealthy Jew, and only wished to have the honor of possessing something in Lessing's handwriting.
Lessing had not been wrong in thinking that this drama would vex pious Christians much more than ten controversial pamphlets against Göze. As soon as it appeared (spring, 1779), intense wrath was felt against the poet, as if he had degraded Christianity. The "Fragments" and his polemics against Göze had not made him so many enemies as "Nathan." Even his friends greeted him coldly, shunned him, excluded him from the social reunions he loved, and left him to the persecution of his adversaries. Through this silent excommunication he felt himself aggrieved, lost more and more of his bright humor and elasticity of spirit, and became wearied, downcast, and almost stupefied. The treatment of pious Christians terribly embittered the last year of his life. He died in vigorous manhood like an aged man, a martyr to his love of truth. But his soul-conquering voice made itself heard on behalf of tolerance, and gradually softened the discordant notes of hatred and prejudice. In spite of the ban placed upon "Nathan," as well as upon its author, both in Protestant and Catholic countries, this drama became one of the most popular in German poetry, and as often as the verses inspired by conviction resound from the stage, they seize upon the hearts of the audience, loosening the links of the chain of Jew-hatred in the minds of Germans, who find it most difficult to throw off its shackles. "Nathan" made an impression on the mind of the German people, which, despite unfavorable circumstances, has not been obliterated. Twenty years before, when Lessing produced his first drama of "The Jews," an arrogant theologian censured it, because it was altogether too improbable that among a people like the Jews, so noble a character could ever be formed. At the appearance of "Nathan" no reader thought that a noble Jew was possible. Even the most stubborn dared not assert so monstrous an absurdity. The Jewish ideal sage was a reality, and lived in Berlin, an ornament not alone to the Jews, but to the German nation. Without Mendelssohn, the drama of "Nathan" would not have been written, just as without Lessing's friendship Mendelssohn would not have become what he did to German literature and the Jewish world. The cordiality of the intimacy between these two friends showed itself after Lessing's death. His brothers and friends, who only after his demise realized his greatness, turned, in the anguish of their loss, to Mendelssohn, as if it were natural that he should be the chief mourner. And in very sooth he was; none of his associates preserved Lessing's memory with so sorrowful a remembrance and religious a reverence. He was beyond all things solicitous to protect his former friend against misapprehension and slander.