tions of the human mind. On the contrary, belief was
awakened in man by God; this is repeatedly declared
in the Koran. * " And one of you is predestined to be
an unbeliever, and another of you is predestined to be a
believer." Unbelief proceeded from a being who was
the source of all evil, Satan Eblis; he causes un-
belief in men, and leads even the believer to disobey
the law of the Prophet. Mahomedanism elaborated
the doctrine of the devil, as also the opposite theory of
angels, and made these distinct articles of the Islam
creed. It is manifest that Mahomed, in pursuance of
these dogmas, would pronounce war against unbelievers
to be a religious duty, since such war effected the
limitation of the devil's power, and the conversion of
the posterity of unbelievers into believers. The exclu-
siveness that is inculcated by Christianity, albeit in its
passive form, in Mahomedanism, in conformity with the
nature of the East, takes an active character, and as-
sumes the offensive.

Of the direct relation of God to man, no question
* Sale's Koran, chap.lxiv.



ISLAMISM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY. 179

could longer be entertained. God was, according to
Islamism, a supernal necessity or fate, before whom
man was nought save an enslaved being, attaining signi-
ficance solely through faith in this divine fate and
in Mahomed. The life of man had no aim or purport,
except faith. In it no general principle of morals (such
as Christianity derived from Mosaism and combined
with its own system) could be enforced. As however,
in the Eastern, the Ideal per se, is not a predominating
element, Mahomed was compelled to seek in material
life a fulcrum for his religious system. We have con-
sequently not to expect any consistent unity of the Idea
and the life, as established by Mosaism ; for life itself
was of no import, according to Mahomedanism. In it
there was no connecting link between the Idea and the
life; for the creation of the soul of man in God's
image, and with it the sanctification of man in God,
had disappeared in Islamism. It therefore enforced,
but did not consistently develop, certain external and
material circumstances only of human existence. The
things it commanded were, purifications, fasts, pray-
ers repeated five times daily, alms-giving, and if
possible, a pilgrimage to Mecca. The things inter-
dicted were, the drinking of wine, the eating of swine's
flesh of blood of the flesh of such animals as have
died of themselves or have been suffocated or killed by a
blow, or torn by a wild beast and all games of chance.
These ordinances were partly borrowed from the neigh-
bouring heathen nations, partly derived from Mosaism.
With these was combined a body of municipal regula-
tions regarding marriage, inheritances, murder, and theft.
For a murder, the relatives were free to accept, at their
option, compensation in money; while to the thief

N2



180 LECTURE VIII.

the severer punishment was adjudged of having his
right hand chopped off.

The stronger was the tendency prevailing in Islamism
to set forth and consolidate religious belief by means of
political power, the more rapidly did Religion and the
State become identified. The kingdom of the faithful
comprehends therefore both Church and State. The
Kaliph or Sultan, is the Vicegerent of Mahomed, the
head of the Mahomedan Church ; and the grades below
him are, like him, either servants of the sword, under the
names of Vizirs and Pashas, or teachers and commanders,
under the names of Imaums and Ulemas. Thus, while
in Mosaism religion and society should be in strict
accordance, it was inevitable that Christianity, by the
separation, in its system, of religion and society, should
originate a severance of Church and State. In Islam-
ism, on the contrary, Church and State are identified ;
so that a new sect could arise only in another state
for example, Turkey and Persia. We therefore recog-
nise in Islamism, the passing of the Religious Idea
out of Judaism into Eastern heathenism. The doctrine
of the one super-mundane God, won to itself the
stedfast allegiance of the Eastern world. Islamism
however, while it held fast instead of, like Christianity,
modifying this fundamental principle, was powerless to
overcome other and minor existing heathen elements.
The creation of man in his Maker's image, and the
thereon consequent freedom of man, succumbed beneath
the heathen conception of the law of necessity. The
direct relation of God to man, as also his sanctification
by morality, resolved themselves into the one condition
of the validity of faith only. Equality of right and
personal freedom were rendered null by the action



ISLAMTSM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY. 181

of slavery; by the personal authority exercised by
believers; by the war waged against unbelievers; by
the principle of election, and exclusion ; and by the
identification of Religion and State. Charity took the
form of alms-giving. The immortality of the spirit was
limited by the fantastic foreshadowing of a future
existence, devoted to unbridled sensuality.

After this manner did that Mahomedanism, whose
first principles were derived from Mosaism, become in
its subsequent development wholly antagonistic to the
Mosaic system. The relation of Islamism to Christi-
anity bore again a different character. In consequence
of its strict adherence to the doctrine of the Unity, and
of the modification by Christianity of this docrine into
that of the Trinity, Islamism became opposed to Chris-
tianity. Irrespective of this one point of divergence,
Islamism has considerable analogy with Christianity, and
it is perhaps more consistent in its development than
Christianity itself. Both religions inculcate justification
by faith ; in both the standard of value of human action,
is faith alone. Both promise eternal bliss to the believer
only. But Christianity is inconsistent, in its retention
of doctrines belonging to the Religious Idea, namely,
Divine Providence, the freedom of man, and the laws
of morality. Islamism is consistent in declaring Fate
or Necessity to be the arbiter of human destiny, and
morality to consist exclusively in the practice of certain
prescribed ordinances of religion. From this incon-
sistency of the Christian, and consistency of the
Mahomedan system, resulted the principal conditions
marking their respective histories. By virtue of this
inconsistency, the path of progress was opened in
Christianity. By its means, the great conflict was



182 LECTURE VIII.

prepared, in which the Christian intellect has been
engaged unremittingly for centuries. Whether or not
is salvation attainable by faith alone? In this ques-
tion, the consistency of the Christian dogma is wholly
involved ; for with the elements of the Religious Idea
indwelling Christianity, is this question closely linked.
In consistent Mahomedanism, progress or development
was impossible ; since by its very system, all such pro-
gress was arrested and repressed. A human being,
whose destiny necessity alone determines, can do nought
save believe, and if he have the power, remove the un-
believer from his path.

To Christianity therefore, the road to the Religious
Idea is open; for the Christian system gradually re-
solves itself into the Religious Idea. Islamism on the
contrary, can but fall into decay under the action of
the Religious Idea ; and, the point of annihilation at-
tained, must be succeeded by that Idea itself.

The final result of this inquiry into the respective
natures of Islamism and Christianity is then, as follows.
The Religious Idea, as founded by Mosaism, after over-
coming heathenism in the Jewish race, and securing in
that race depositaries wholly devoted to their mission,
passed in Christianity and Moslemism, out of Judaism
(only as an Idea however, and without control over
material life) into the general world of man. Under
the form of Christianity, it overcame the disorganised
Heathenism of the West ; under that of Islamism, the
feebly existing remnants of Heathenism in the East.
In both religions, the Religious Idea was so amalga-
mated with, and modified by, elements of the heathen
idea, that in Christianity it retained its hold on the
human mind, as idea only ; while in rigidly consistent



ISLAMISM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY. 183

Moslemism, the heathen element preponderated. Ju-
daism therefore remained the bearer of the Religious
Idea, whole and entire, though combining it in Tal-
mudism with a newly-elaborated code of enactments, in
order to preserve it in the dispersion of the Jewish
race, from the new antagonisms of Christianity and
Islamism, for the future of mankind.



184



LECTURE IX.

THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSIONS.

IN the foregoing lectures we sought to elucidate the
relation of Christianity and Islamism to the Religious
Idea, and thence to deduce the necessity for the con-
tinued existence in Judaism of the religious idea in its
completeness. Were I to adhere strictly to the natural
order of the subjects to he treated in these lectures, it
would certainly indicate that we should now proceed to
consider the manner and mode of this continued exist-
ence in Talmudism ; and also (having already discussed
the rise of Talmudism previous to Christianity) the pur-
port and character of Talmudism itself.

I deem it advisable, nevertheless, first to call your
attention to the phase of existence exhibited in the
receptacles of this Talmudic- Judaism Jewdom. And
for what reason ? you will enquire. Talmudism is so
peculiar a creation, the result of such peculiar intellec-
tual tendencies, that it is impossible to comprehend its
nature, unless we previously understand the object for
which it was designed unless we have previously re-
cognised its aim, its scope, and its indispensability. If
it has been ascertained first, that the preservation of
Jewdom was necessary to the endurance of the re-
ligious idea; and secondly, that by Talmudism alone



THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSIONS. 185

the continued existence of Jewdoni could be secured ;
we shall have possessed ourselves of the guiding thread,
without which we might wander pathless in its vast and
intricate labyrinths.

I bespeak your attention to-day therefore to the his-
tory of the Jews in their dispersion. I must premise
however, that it is foreign to the task I have undertaken
to give utterance to the just lamentations, which
an intimate acquaintance with a history, whose every
page, nay, whose every line, whose every letter is
written in blood, may well wring from the sincere
friend of humanity. This blood was not shed on the
battle-field, where the destinies of nations were decided ;
nor was this martyrdom endured as expiation for crime,
but this life-stream was pressed from the heart, this mar-
tyrdom crushed the limbs, of a race of men, who, guilt-
less of wrong against the lives or the property of their
fellow-beings, sought but liberty to live true to their
consciences and their God. History, like her eternal
sister, Nature, possesses the great privilege of recording
the general results of events, and of passing silently
over the griefs and sufferings laid successively by in-
dividuals on the altar of the general good. The unin-
terrupted and eternal production of life is the law of
nature. But life necessitates death. Countless old
generations must die that countless new generations may
be born. In order to sustain life nature must destroy
life. In like manner, history requires the suffering and
the annihilation of millions of individual men, in order
to secure to the race of man continued and progressive
development, and to prepare for it an ever greater
future, an ever more glorious existence. Judged
according to this standard, the thousand holocausts



186 LECTURE IX.

which the annals of every people record are recognised
to have been offered for a loftier end. History, which
would otherwise present a melancholy picture of tyranny
and slavery, of force and thraldom, of human suffer-
ings and passions, becomes, when viewed in this light, a
solemn record of the eternal strivings of mankind for
higher objects, of its aspirations for the conquest of
truth and right.

Let us thus look upon the history of Jewdom in its dis-
persions, and we shall at once perceive, that these dis-
persions had for aim and end the preservation of the
Religious Idea ; and that all that the Jews, its deposita-
ries and bearers, were called upon to endure, all their
sufferings during fifteen centuries (of which sufferings,
alas ! many still continue) were a necessity which in the
fulfilment of their sublime mission could not be averted.
Nay, instead of the remembrance of the evil treatment
received by this peaceable people causing us to mourn,
the thought should rather inspire us with feelings of ad-
miration at the inward power of the spirit, enabling a
whole race to conquer all disasters and defy all calamities.
What more does-Jewdom desire? It has gained the vic-
tory. The world sought to annihilate it, and yet Jewdom
exists. The world strove to render it dumb, and yet Jew-
dom speaks, speaks now, even louder and more audibly
than ever, in the ears of mankind. Yet more Jewdom
sees the animosity which prevailed against her daily di-
minish hears the world rescind daily its hostile edicts
feels her sufferings and anguish pass away, virulence and
oppression gradually die out. Jewdom may with truth
exclaim, ' I have endured to the end ; and this en-
durance has won its reward/ It has achieved that
which it was its task to accomplish ; it has preserved the



THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSIONS. 187

religious idea for the great future of mankind. Let us
therefore not deem the history of Jewdom in its dis-
persions to be but a blood-stained record of uniform
oppression and violence. Let us on the contrary, re-
cognise it to be that which it truly is the conflict of
the Spirit with its antagonisms for the eternal preserva-
tion of the Religious Idea. Seen under this aspect
the existence of the Jewish people is neither a mystic
riddle, as by some it has been supposed to be, for the
key to its solution lies at hand ; nor is it a mournful
picture veiled in sadness; it is a brilliant image, de-
lineating the power of the immortal soul of man.

We repeat the sufferings of the Jewish race, from
the fourth century down to the present time, their
exclusion from political society, the persecutions they
have endured throughout the world, were the necessary
conditions of the fulfilment of their holy mission. This
proposition we now proceed to examine and to verify.

When a nation loses its independence, one of two
consequences must ensue; either it is destroyed in the
last struggle, or (and this is but another form of de-
struction) it is amalgamated with its conquerors. The
nation may be preserved in its separate members, but
in its collective form, its especial purpose, its na-
tionality in fine, it exists no longer. To the existence
of the Jewish race no such close was appointed; for
the fulfilment of its lofty mission forbad alike its anni-
hilation and its amalgamation with its conquerors. That
race was dispersed, retaining in its dispersion its pecu-
liar character. This dispersion, as we have shown in a
former lecture, was the instrument of its material sal-
vation. Had this numerically insignificant nation (the
smallest of all the peoples of the earth) remained in



188 LECTURE IX.

Palestine, it could not have retained its integrity amid
the irruptions of the barbarians, the conquests of the
Mahomedan Arabians, the incursions of Zhengiskhan
and of the Saracens and Turkomans. That it had
been conquered and dismembered by the tolerant Ro-
mans before the outbreak of these wars of devastation
and of the Crusades, was a beneficent ordination of
the Almighty Ruler of the Universe, and an evidence of
His governing providence.

The existence of the Jewish race as a people was not
necessary. Indeed the accomplishment of their sacred
task was far more powerfully aided by their dispersion.
Through the absence of all political and municipal
vitality in the numerous isolated communities, was
this, their task more promptly and efficiently performed.
The religious idea was freed by the dispersion of the
Jews from the trammelling influence of political and
municipal life, and space and opportunity were secured
to its depositaries for their own and its preservation.

But for this end it was also necessary, that the Jews
should be placed in a position which would prevent
their amalgamation with the dominant nation in whose
centre they respectively dwelt. On this point I am
anxious to avoid misapprehension. I would therefore
observe, that I here refer exclusively to the times at
which nations were specifically ruled by the two new
churches, in part antagonistic to the religious idea,
Christianity and Moslemism, then in their most dog-
matic stage of development : an era at which the political
amalgamation of the Hebrew race would have been in-
evitably combined with an absorption of the religious
idea into the forms of Christianity and Islamism ; an
age, as will be admitted, wholly different in its character



THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSIONS. 189

from the present time, and inducing consequently wholly
different conditions of existence.

That the Jewish race should assume in their disper-
sions, a distinctive and isolating mental costume and
character, which should place them in strong contrast
to the dominant churches, (and this idiosyncracy was
secured to them by Talmudism) and that their temporal
position should be exclusive in its tendency, so as to
render them wholly dependent on themselves and their
own resources, (a state of being imposed on them by
the iron rule of the middle ages) was a historical ne-
cessity. Both conditions were indispensable to the pre-
servation of the Jewish race in its integrity, and both
were fulfilled.

It may be objected, and with truth if the material
fact be alone considered, that the social position of the
Jews and the oppression and suffering to which they
were exposed, were virtually induced by the peculiari-
ties to which the race so pertinaciously adhered. But
if the Jews had not, both from choice and necessity,
preserved their individuality, their fusion with the other
dominant creeds would have been inevitable ; and true
it certainly is, that in their new garb of Christian and
Mahomedan they would have had nothing to endure.
The service of the Religious Idea rendered this immu-
nity impossible. Nor does this afford to the dominant
churches the slightest justification for the tyranny and
cruelty exercised by them towards the Hebrew race.
The peculiarity of my fellow-man, as long as it does
no injury to society, in no way gives me the right to in-
jure him in life, property, and honour; nor to beat
him to death, either morally or physically. The pre-
servation of this peculiarity was the only reproach cast



190 LECTURE IX.

upon the Jews after they had been degraded to the very
lowest social position by their oppressors. It has, how-
ever, I trust, been clearly shown, that for this con-
dition of things there existed an historical necessity.
To the Jewish race it was given to preserve within itself
the religious idea, unscathed by the antagonisms of the
dominant Christian and Mahomedan churches. The
only means by which this could be carried out was, the
adoption of a peculiar external form of religious life.
So soon as the dominant churches came to compre-
hend the antagonisms to their own system inherent in
Judaism, they naturally sought to annihilate Judaism,
or to thrust aside and supplant it. The necessary
consequences of this animosity were the constant per-
secutions and banishments of the Jews, and their
political and municipal expulsion whether as commu-
nities or as individuals.

Another historical feature of the middle ages was the
feudal system. Its most marked tendency was the sub-
division of the state into guilds or companies. Feudal-
ism split up the aggregate of society into many separate
bodies, and assigned to each a particular position and
constitution, and individual rights and privileges. In-
stead of erecting the state on the universal basis of
equal and general rights, instead of comprehending
each and every portion of society as constituting an
integral part of the whole social fabric, instead of recog-
nising the people collectively to be one body politic,
feudalism divides and subdivides them, according to a
certain fixed scheme, from the monarch down to the
serf, into classes, guilds, corporations, and arranges
them in orders, companies, etc., that stand to each
other in the relative positions of inferior and superior.



THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSIONS. 191

What post was appointed to the Jew in this feudal
state? What rank was he to hold in this scheme?
Neither amid the nobles, nor the guilds of the towns,
nor the serfdom of the peasant, would it concede a place
to the Hebrew. Feudalism condemned the Jew to
remain a foreign excrescence, an outcast from them all.
By feudalism were the Jews considered to be but appen-
dages of the monarch, who in his gracious clemency
tolerated their presence as imperial or royal menials.
They paid tribute to the sovereign, were under his im-
mediate protection, which he could grant, or rather sell
to them, or withhold from them, at his royal pleasure.
They were thus denied all rights, were compelled to
dwell in separate quarters of the towns, were forbidden
to hold land and to pursue any trade. But one alter-
native was allowed, but one dark retreat afforded them,
whence their fellow-men shrunk in disgust. Permission
was accorded them to wander as hawkers, pedlars, and
money-lenders, foot-sore and weary, from place to place.*
So abject was the plight to which the feudal system had
reduced the sons of Israel; those who in Palestine had
been a free and agricultural people, in Rome Roman citi-
zens, were now condemned to be hirelings and menials,
earning their exile's bread in the land of their birth by
hawking and usury. Princes and emperors pledged
their right to the tenure of Jews, sometimes to towns,
sometimes to feudal lords of higher or lower degree. In
other instances they conceded their claim to the servitude
of the Jews for payment, or in compliance with petitions

* True were then the poet's words :

" The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country, Israel but the grave."



192 LECTURE IX.

or threats, to certain circles and towns. From this arbi-
trary and lawless rule to which they were subjected,
other and serious evils resulted to the Jews. The
callings they were permitted to pursue, acted prejudi-
cially on their moral condition. It may with truth be
asserted, that the highest credit redounds to the Jewish
race, that under the pressure of circumstances so
degrading, they not only were not wholly demoralised,
but preserved a freshness of spirit and a strength of
character, which they mainly derived from the peculiar
constitution of their spiritual and religious life. In
other instances again, these pursuits brought them
constantly into collision with great and small. The
borrower hates the lender; the more deeply he is
indebted, the more entirely he is in the power of his
creditor, the more anxious is he to set him aside by
physical force, particularly in an age when might made
right, and when that lender was without arms and
without legal defence. Thus the longer the Jews
remained in any one locality, the more imminent and
certain were their persecution and expulsion, simply
because the greater was the number of those whose
interest it was to effect their removal.

A third and necessary consequence was, that as the
snail ever seeks shelter within its shelly tenement from
the bruising heel of the passer-by, so the persecuted Jew
ever withdrew deeper and deeper into intellectual seclu-
sion. All spiritual connection with other nations
gradually ceased. An attachment to scientific pursuits,
which had endured to a much later period (even so
late as the commencement of the fifteenth century)
among the Jews than among the Arabians and Chris-
tians, expired at length amid the universal persecutions



THE JEWS IN THEIR DISPERSION'S. 193

to which they were subjected, particularly those which
accompanied their expulsion from Spain. At the era
when the taste for classical studies was revived, and
when the other European peoples gladly shook off their
long intellectual lethargy, no ray of morning light
could penetrate into the dark Ghetto or Jews' quarter,