There now only remains the last yet published, and in the estimation of many, the greatest, of George Eliot’s works—‘Daniel Deronda.’ In it the author takes up—not a new scope, but extends one that has all along been present, and that indeed was inevitably associated with her great ethical principle,—the bringing of that principle definitely and directly to bear upon not only every domestic but every social and political relation of human life. This tendency may be briefly expressed in the old and profound words: “No man liveth to himself; no man dieth to himself.” As we aim toward the true and good and pure, or surrender ourselves the slaves of self and sense, we live or die to God or to the devil.
Before, however, proceeding to detailed examination of this remarkable work, it seems necessary to draw attention to one objection which has been urged against it—the prominent introduction of the Jewish element into its scheme. Such objection could scarcely have been put forward by any one who considers what the Jew has been in the past—what an enormous factor
his past and present have been and are, in the development and progress of our highest civilisation. Historically, we first meet him coming forth from the Arabian desert, a rude unlettered herdsman, in intelligence, cultivation, and morality far below the tribes among whom he is thrown. A terrible weapon arms him—a theism stern, hard, and pitiless, beyond, perhaps, all the world has ever seen. To the bravest and best of his race—a Moses and a Joshua, a Deborah and a Jephtha—this presents ruthless massacre, the vilest treachery, offering up a sacrifice the dearest and most loved, not as mere permissible acts, but as deeds of religious homage solemnly enjoined by his Most High. This theism has one central thought in which it practically stands alone, and which it was the aim of all its supposed heads and legislators to keep inviolate amid all surrounding antagonisms—the intense assertion of the Divine unity. “Hear, O Israel! the Lord thy God is one Lord.” In these brief words lies the very core of Judaism. So long as he holds fast by this central truth, the Jew is exhibited to us as practically omnipotent. Seas and floods divide before him; hosts numberless as the sands are scattered at his appearance; cyclopean walls fall prone at his trumpet-blast.
And this thought of the Divine unity, thus intensely pervading the national life, upfolds within capacity of indefinite development. No long time in the life of a nation elapses ere “The Lord thy God is a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,” became “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget; yet will not I forget thee.”
In no sense of the word was the Jew a creature of imagination. The stern and hard realities of his life would seem to have crushed out every trace of the æsthetic element within him. Yet from among these people arose a literature, especially a hymnology, which has never been approached elsewhere; and it arose emphatically and distinctly out of the great central and animating thought of the Divine unity. To the Psalms so-called of David, the glorious outbursts of sacred song in their mythico-historical books, as in Isaiah [{103}] and some of the minor prophets, the finest of the Vedic or Orphic hymns or the Homeric ballads are cold and spiritless. These address themselves to scholars alone, or chiefly to a cultivated few, and address themselves to them eloquently and gloriously. The hymns of the Jews have so interpenetrated the very heart of humanity,
so identified themselves with the best longings, the noblest aspirations, the purest hopes, and the deepest sorrows of man, that still, after more than twenty centuries, that wonderful hymnology breathes up day after day, week after week, from millions of households and hearts. They outbreathe its fervid aspirations toward a purer and diviner life. They give expression to its profound wailings over degradation and fall. They give utterance on all the inscrutable mysteries of existence; and ever and anon as the clouds and darkness break away from the Infinite Love,—they burst forth into the exultant cry, “God reigneth, let the earth be glad. . . . Give thanks at remembrance of His holiness.”
But important as is this factor of Judaism, there is another generally considered which has perhaps exercised a still more profound and cumulative influence on the civilisation especially of the West. This lies in the intense indestructible nationality of the race. Eighteen centuries have passed since they became a people, “scattered and peeled,” their “holy and beautiful house” a ruin, their capital a desolation, their land proscribed to the exile’s foot. During these centuries deluge after deluge of so-called barbarians has swept over Asia and Europe: Hun and Tartar, Alan and Goth, Suev and Vandal,—we attach certain vague meanings to the names, but can the most learned scholar identify one individual of the true unmingled blood? All have disappeared, merged in
the race they overran, in the kingdoms they conquered and devastated. The Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed, persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined, as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism, “God is one.” Be He the incarnation of pitiless vengeance, hardening Pharaoh’s heart that He may execute sevenfold wrath on him and his people; be He the Good Shepherd, who “gathers the lambs in His arms,” and for their sakes “tempers His rough wind in the day of His east wind;”—to the Jew He has been and is, “I am the Lord; that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another.”
Through those long ages of darkness, devil-worship, and polytheism (in its grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest against all. Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words embodied the central confession of Judaism, “O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.” Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more central truth, “God is love,” had to all appearance failed of its mission; had not only merged its higher message in a theistic presentation, dark and terroristic as that of Judaism at its dawn, but had absorbed into