On the same occasion as that noted above, the opening of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, Hon. ABRAM S. HEWITT, Mayor of New York City, spoke as follows:
"No other people, so far as I have observed, no sect or denomination or party have done so much as the Jews, to relieve distress, give education and elevate the standard of morality in our midst, and I make that statement after a good deal of observation and attention, particularly that part of it concerning the subject of education.
"I have never found the Jews lacking in public spirit. It is said of them that they have the art of getting wealth. If but a part of what is said of them be true, they understand well the use of wealth when once acquired. They are found among the first admirers of art, they love music and have since the daughters of Judah hung their harps on the willows by the waters of Babylon.
"This charity is unique, and it is a link in the chain of Jewish institutions. So long as there are calls by suffering humanity, the Jews will year by year add new links to their beautiful chain until it embraces every need of society regardless of race and religion.
"I have read at the door as I entered, that the Israelites erected this building to the chronic sick in honor of Moses Montefiore, a Jew, who for nearly a hundred years set an example to other people and creeds of a broad charity that affects all people and all lands.
"This institution was one long wanted in New York for a class for whom there is no hope save such offered by the poor-house or Blackwell's Island. They were here given instead a home in which love reigned and religion presided, religion which opened the portals of the other world where all must go, rich and poor, Jew and Christian, where reigns the Heavenly Father whose chosen people have proven steadfast amid all oppression and persecution, and who has so long preserved them, but who nevertheless knows no difference between His children."
From a deeply thoughtful address before the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Philadelphia, by Judge F. CARROLL BREWSTER, on the Valley of Baca as referred to in Psalm lxxxiv, we quote the following as the expression of a Nestor among jurists:
"Perhaps, then, the very dreariness of this barren place was intended as a prophecy of the woes which God's chosen people should encounter on their march through the history of many ages. And the water to be found in the midst of this desolation might prefigure the refreshing deliverance which the centuries were to bring. Of bitterness and of persecution, of suffering beyond man's power to describe, of its depth, of all that is sad and sorrowful, the history of the Jewish nation bears tearful testimony. The student has two marvels, as he turns these weary pages of the very monotony of cruelty. He wonders how the ferocity of man could ever enact this horrible tragedy, and then he wonders how the race survived.
"It would be a vain and painful task to recite here the thousandth part of what history tells us, and it is certain that history does not, in this case as in many others, falsify the facts. These narratives were all written by the actors who took a horrid pride in recounting their own infamy. The man who has but a moderate installment of feeling in his breast must cry out with indignation as he reads of these outrages. To the jurist they are especially repugnant, for they tell not only of the slaughter of human beings, but of the murder of justice."
The following is from the pen of GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, the life-long editor of "Harper's Weekly" and "Harper's Magazine." As a prominent actor in the stirring events of his generation he has left a marked impress on our national life, but great as was his influence in the councils of the nation he was yet best known to the large mass of the American people as the genial, persuasive writer of the "Easy Chair" in the magazine which he so ably edited. The extract which we print is from that department of Harper's Magazine, where it appeared in July, 1877, vol. 55, p. 300.
What We Owe to the Jews.
"One beautiful June evening in Paris the 'Easy Chair' strolled with a friend into a café on the Boulevard. They had been to hear 'Robert le Diable' at the French Opera, and gaily humming and gossiping they sat upon the broad walk that was still thronged on the still summer night. Presently a dark-haired man came quietly along and seated himself at a table near by. He was alone, and seemed not to care for recognition. He was simply dressed and was entirely unnoticeable except for the strong Jewish lines of his intellectual face. The 'Easy Chair's' companion whispered, 'That is the man to whom we owe the delight of this evening; that is Meyerbeer.' After a little while he added with feeling, 'How much we owe to the Jews and how mean Christendom is!'
"It was remarkable how much of the conspicuous work and influence on that evening was due to the genius of a people whose name is so constantly used as a word of reproach. A few months before, Mendelssohn had been buried in Leipsic, and in Berlin the 'Easy Chair' had heard the memorial concert of his music at the Sing-Akademie. Rossini was still living, and Verdi was writing operas, but Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were the recognized masters of music. The evening before, the 'Easy Chair' had seen the Jewess Rachel in 'Phedre'—the one woman who contests the laurel with Mrs. Siddons, and who was then the great living actress. Beyond the channel, Disraeli, the child of Spanish Jews, was just about to kiss hands as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to become the political leader of the British Tories. In the vast city in which they were sitting, the 'Easy Chair' knew that the Jewish Heine was living, breathing his weird and melancholy song, while in Paris and London and Frankfort and Vienna the great masters of the mainspring of industrial activity, the capitalists, who held peace and war in their hands, and by whose favor kings ruled, were Jews. The philosophy, the arts, the industry, the politics of Christendom were full of the Jewish genius, the gayety of nations, the delight of scholars, the scepters of princes, the movements of civilization, hung in great degree upon it. It is as true to-day as in that long summer night, and the words of the 'Easy Chair's' friend are still as shamefully true. 'How mean Christendom is!'
"Recently in New York an estimable and accomplished gentleman was rejected as a member of the Bar Association 'for no other reason that can be conceived,' indignantly said one of the leading members, 'except that he was a Jew.' Doubtless a few votes would procure the rejection. But the Association is not a social club, and presumptively a man who is an honorable member of the Bar is a fit member of the Association. The few hostile votes, however, represent the prejudice. It is very old and very universal. To the audience of to-day there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of 'Shylock' to the common humanity of the world around him. The Jew is still separate, and the prejudice which has pursued him for generations is but slightly relaxed. The lines of demarcation are fine. They are often almost invisible. But they are deep, and apparently absolute. It is one of the most common and most tenacious of the objections to 'Daniel Deronda' that it deals with Jews and Jewish life and character. The fact is sometimes almost resented as an offence to the mass of readers. Even in 'Ivanhoe,' although torrents of Christian tears have flowed over the closing pages, where the noble and beautiful 'Rebecca' asks to see the face of the fair 'Rowena,' yet such is the fell and weird outlaw of the Jew from general sympathy, that the catastrophe seems to be an inevitable fate. There is no doubt that this prejudice is as cruel in its effects as it is unreasonable in its origin....
"The legend of the 'Wandering Jew' has a pathos beyond the usual interpretation. The story is told that the Jew, who refused to comfort Christ as he toiled under the weight of the cross, was condemned to tarry until he came, and so wanders around the world until the second coming. But it is the symbol also of the restlessness of the race, roaming through Christendom, homeless and rejected. It is the curse, says many a Christian heart, of the people that crucified the Redeemer. This is the common theory of the origin of the traditional antipathy to the Jews, and, undoubtedly, this is with many persons a vague justification of the feeling with which a Jew is regarded. But should it be nothing to such persons that when, as they believe, the Creator would incarnate himself, He became a Jew? Or, again, do they reflect that if it was in the eternal decrees that the sins of men were to be atoned and condoned by the innocent sacrifice, those who accomplished the sacrifice were but the agents of the Divine will? Are all such ingenious speculations other than devices to explain and justify a mere prejudice of race, such as some African tribes cherish against people of white skins? Those who find in such prejudice a profound significance will continue to plead the feeling as its own sufficient reason. But honorable men will be careful how they carelessly use the name of a race to which the religion, the literature, the art, the civilized progress of humanity, are so greatly indebted, as a term of utter derision and scorn."