The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. Even in those olden days, when the people were divided into but two distinct classes, slaves and masters—even so long ago had the law of Moses prohibited the practice of keeping a person in bondage for more than six years.
The Jew is the pioneer of civilization. Ignorance was condemned in olden Palestine more even than it is to-day in civilized Europe.Moreover, in those wild and barbarous days, when neither life nor the death of any one counted for anything at all, Rabbi Akiba[39] did not refrain from expressing himselfopenly against capital punishment, a practice which is recognized to-day as a highly civilized way of punishment.
The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious toleration. ‘Love the stranger and the sojourner’, Moses commands, ‘because you have been strangers in the land of Egypt.’ And this was said in those remote and savage times when the principal ambition of the races and nations consisted in crushing and enslaving one another. As concerns religious toleration, the Jewish faith is not only far from the missionary spirit of converting people of other denominations, but on the contrary the Talmud commands the Rabbis to inform and explain to every one who willingly comes to accept the Jewish religion, all the difficulties involved in its acceptance, and to point out to the would-be proselyte that the righteous of all nations have a share in immortality. Of such a lofty and ideal religious toleration not even the moralists of our present day can boast.
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He whom neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he whom neither fire nor sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off from the face of the earth, he who was the first to produce the oracles of God, he who has been for so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the rest of the world—such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is everlasting as is eternity itself.
LEO TOLSTOY.
THE BOOK OF THE AGES[40]
THE Bible is the book of the ancient world, the book of the Middle Ages, and the book of modern times. Where does Homer stand compared with the Bible? Where the Vedas or the Koran? The Bible is inexhaustible.
A. HARNACK.