THE
HISTORY OF ZIONISM
CHAPTER I.
ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
Hellas, Rome and Israel—The Englishman’s Bible—Its influence upon English Literature—Rev. Paul Knell, Matthew Arnold, Sir H. Havelock, Gordon, Livingstone, Ruskin, Carlyle, Taine, Sir L. T. Dibdin, Huxley, and J. R. Green—The Puritans—The Pilgrim Fathers—James I.—Cromwell.
No great idea, once proclaimed, has ever yet perished from the earth. An idea may assume new forms, may change its mere outward semblance—for all great ideas are plastic in their attributes and immutable in their essentials—but, once it has been enunciated, human life absorbs it within itself for ever.
The Greek spirit of freedom, and the order, discipline and law of Rome survive in Anglo-Saxon institutions, not by mere enforcement of victorious arms, but because men have recognized them as the happiest approximation to the independence of each and the subordination of all that has ever yet been conceived.
To Greece was entrusted the cultivation of reason and taste. Her gift to mankind has been science and art. To the Greeks we owe the science of logic, which has dominated the minds of all modern thinkers. Much of the spirit of modern politics, too, comes from Greece. On the other hand, the sentiments and the organizing force behind all States and Governments, which are absolutely indispensable to their vigour, are to a great extent Roman. Justinian’s[¹] laws have penetrated into all modern legislation. Thus Greece may be said to have disciplined human reason and taste, and Rome human organization and power.
[¹] Flavius Anicius Julianus Justinian I. [The Great] (483–565).
But England has been influenced by Israel even more than by Hellas and Latium; by the power and the light of the Hebrew genius—by the Bible.
The mission of the Hebrew race was to lay the foundation of morality and religion on earth. Their works and their Book are great facts in the history of man; the influence of their mind upon the rest of mankind has been immense and peculiar. The Hebrews may be said to have disciplined the human conscience; and to the pages of their sacred books humanity has turned again and again for new inspiration.