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We
hasten to lay before our readers the following communication of a
lady, who wishes, for the present at least, to remain unknown to our
readers.* We, however, are well acquainted with her name and history,
and feel sure that our readers, like ourself, will appreciate the
extreme delicacy and firmness with which she has so ably warded off the
insidious attacks of a female friend to induce her to abandon Judaism.
Our correspondent is, alas! as she has herself said in her letter, not
the only one of her family who has been subjected to these assaults, and
hence the rebuke, though so mildly conveyed, comes with more withering
effect from her well-stored mind. She clearly proves that she is not an
Israelite merely by name, but from choice, and well has she chosen her
portion, deriving strength to love it from her familiarity with the
counsels of God.
The work “Judah’s Lion,” by Charlotte Elizabeth,
which was the cause of the correspondence, we have never read, not
having had as yet the inclination to peruse this new missionary
production, as we did not deem it, in all likelihood, more powerful than
other works of the same stamp. The arguments of Christians are repeated
every now and then with such an air of triumph, as though some new,
unheard-of weapons had at length been discovered to penetrate the
hitherto impenetrable armour of Israel. But upon examination they are
proved to be the self-same weapons, drawn from the ancient storehouse of
polemics, only burnished up to look like articles of a modern date.
Hence there is little occasion for an Israelite to become familiar with
all the publications that relate to the difference between Jews and
Christians, even if he has to be master of his subject. Nevertheless
such works as Miriam, Judah’s Lion, and Maria, are calculated to
mislead the unwary, they being in the shape of fiction, and thus able to
convey impressions where they even fail to convince. Our
opponents have therefore a means through them of imposing upon the
ignorant by a show of argument under the guise of narrative, the views
of which our people have always rejected. This, by the by, is one of the
dangers of our position of which we would have spoken in an article
under that name, if we had not extended it already to too great a length
upon one subject. Still, no one can doubt that it is a danger, when
skilfully handled by artful friends, in the moment of confidence,
especially towards young boys and girls, who have not yet learned to
know the hollowness of the pretensions of those who endeavour to gain
proselytes at all hazards.—We can hardly express our contempt for
those who thus betray the confidence which parents at times so
unworthily repose in them; and yet they are commended by their spiritual
advisers for their zeal. But can Christianity be strengthened by
converts thus obtained? or is the pretended salvation of a Jewish soul
of such vast importance as to legalize breaches of confidence and
betrayals of friendship? We hardly think that the greatest zealot could
defend such conduct if he reflects seriously; and yet men and women of
the highest respectability have been guilty of the baseness we have just
described.
We may be accused of using strong language; but not
half so strong as the bitterness of our heart would lead us, to employ
if we were to speak all we think, to so great an extent has the
daringness risen with which some persons have invaded the sanctity of
our domestic hearth, and among them are men who hold high offices in
some of the churches. We are glad therefore that Miss —— has at
length resolved to lay her reasons for being a Jewess before the world;
and we trust that she will always consider the Occident as open for her
whenever she wishes to address her Christian friends or her Jewish
well-wishers.—Ed. Oc.
TO
THE EDITOR OF THE OCCIDENT.
Reverend Sir,
The letter which you will find below, was written
to a Christian friend of piety and intelligence, in consequence of her
having expressed great concern for my spiritual condition. In the
sincere hope of effecting a change in my opinions, and thereby rendering
me an eternal service, she earnestly requested me to peruse a work by
Charlotte Elizabeth called “Judah’s Lion,” and to inform her of
the effect it might have on my opinions. As I know that this book has
been presented to more than one of the daughters of Israel, with similar
views, as one which, while it expresses great veneration for our
religion and love for its followers, contains unanswerable evidences of
our hopeless error in refusing to behold in Jesus of Nazareth, our
promised Messiah, and convincing arguments of the necessity of our
becoming Christians: it has occurred to me that the opposite views
expressed on this subject in my answer to my truly kind and zealous
friend, might be read with some interest and satisfaction by those who
have been similarly assailed, and perhaps with some benefit by the
wavering. If, therefore, you find this letter, to which I have subjoined
a few deeply serious reflections and earnest aspirations, not belonging
of course to the original, and intended exclusively for the perusal of
my co-heirs in our glorious inheritance, worthy of a place in your
valuable periodical, I would gladly see them published, in the hope that
by their means, feeble though they be, an occasional inquirer may be led
to the perception of the “wondrous things contained in our law.” I,
too, would print some “footsteps on the sands of time”—
“Footsteps, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing may take heart again.”
With sincere wishes for the continued success of
your laborious and enterprising work, I would gladly subscribe myself an
humble fellow-labourer in the cause of Israel, though but an unknown
AMERICAN
JEWESS.
My Dear Friend,
I have not forgotten the interest you expressed in me
during the last hurried half-hour that we spent together, nor the
promise I then made you to procure the book you recommended to me with
such kind intentions; and I fear you have thought me ungracious, if not
ungrateful, to have been so long silent on the subject; but after this
long silence I hardly think you will feel disappointed when I tell you
that though I got the book and possessed myself of its contents, it most
signally failed in bringing about the result that you so much desired.
If it had been the first work that I had ever looked into upon this
great subject, it might possibly have had the effect of inducing me to
look into the merits of the faith in which I have been born and reared,
but as I am a Jewess not merely by birth and because my ancestors for so
many hundred years have been Israelites, but by firm conviction, the
result of impartial inquiry, study, comparison and meditation, a
stronger than “Judah’s Lion” must be found to overcome this
conviction.
It
is not my intention to enter upon a criticism of this book. The author
is evidently a great admirer of, or rather in the French acceptation of
the word, at our nation, and I sincerely believe would rejoice
did a portion of the ancient blood flow in her own veins; but the gross
ignorance that she displays concerning us is astonishing, and the
blunders into which this betrays her, must strike every Jewish reader,
and some of the absurdities of the work could, I think, hardly pass
unobserved by a reader of any denomination: such for instance as giving
to a child of six years old an amount of biblical learning and
proselyting zeal scarcely ever combined in men nine times his age. The
author’s idea was, I suppose, to show that the bulwarks of our faith
are so weak that even a little child could overthrow them. This the
little child has, in my opinion, failed to do, although the author has
most unnaturally bestowed on him the strength of the giant. Now let
“Judah’s Lion” rest in peace.
My dear friend, I find in my religion all that is
necessary to comfort human misery, to strengthen human virtue, to
elevate and ennoble human nature—to raise the heart in love and
adoration to its Maker, while with the deepest humility it confesses
that these great privileges are to be procured only by profound and
habitual obedience to His word. We cannot in the pride of our heart,
exclaim, “I am great, for I have discovered or invented a system by
which I may become holy!” God has left nothing for us to invent or
discover. We must “ascribe unto the Lord the glory due unto His
name.” In a system of laws unequalled in minuteness by that of any
human legislator, He has pointed out to us, step by step, the road to
holiness. All that we have to do, is to study and obey. Christian
friends have sometimes said to me, “But your religion seems so
difficult, God seems so terrible and so distant without the intervention
of a mediator.” No, my friend, God is not distant: true He is
represented as inhabiting the heavens, the floor of which is vulgarly
imagined to be above the stars, with which its lower surface is adorned;
but what are these unattainable heavens, where according to this idea
God reigns concealed from all His creatures, but infinite space teeming
with the operations of Infinite Power? The earth, with all its
inhabitants, as in company with its sister planets it performs its
appointed journey round the sun, is as surely in these heavens, as
surely in the presence of its Creator, as is the most distant star that
the power of the telescope can draw from its lurking-place in the
seventh heaven. We on our terrestrial globe float in the essence of this
all-pervading, almighty Spirit. This and much more of His nature does
human science enable us to discover. But has this wonderful Being made
no farther revelations of Himself to such of His intelligent creatures
as He has given the earth for a habitation, than those He has afforded
through man’s intellect operating upon His works? These are indeed
great, but they are not sufficient for man’s necessities, nor for
man’s desires. Yes! a Book is found among men. It is called The
Book, because they esteem it to be filled with the revelations of God to
man; more than this, as containing words spoken by the voice of God.
But how am I to know that this is indeed so, and
that this Book is not of man’s invention?
Do you doubt? These audible words of God were
spoken in the hearing of a whole nation, small indeed but entire, more
than three thousand years ago; a nation which this same Book says, in
the words of God, shall be preserved a distinct and peculiar people
among the nations of the earth, as long as the heavens and the earth
endure, as witnesses of God and of the truth of His word.
Show me then this nation after the lapse of so many
ages, and I will no longer doubt.
You
will find them scattered through all the nations of the earth; this too
was predicted of them, in this Book that you would prove; and the more
you examine their history, their customs, their opinions, the more
firmly will you be convinced, not only of their own identity, but that
all the revelations of God to man were made to them, and through them to
all other nations who know Him rightly. Their existence alone is
sufficient evidence of the truth of The Book. If they had ceased to be a
nation upon the earth, this Book would not be true: when they shall
cease to be a nation upon the earth, this Book can no longer be looked
upon as the Book of Truth, for it will testify of that which is false.
I, my dear Mrs. ——, am one of God’s witnesses; would you have me
desert my high calling? Hear what a Christian divine, Bishop Watson,
zays of us.
“Wherever
we have a Jew on the surface of the earth, there we have a man whose
testimony and whose conduct connect the present time with the beginning
of all time. He now believes, and he declares that all his progenitors
have constantly believed, the history contained in the hook of Moses to
be a true history; he now obeys the laws which God gave to Moses above
three thousand years ago; now practises the circumcision which God
enjoined to Abraham; now observes the passover in commemoration of the
mercy vouchsafed to his nation when God destroyed the first-born
throughout the land of Egypt; now keeps holy the seventh day, on which
God rested from the works of the creation. When nations institute rites
to preserve the memory of great events, the uniform observance of the
rite authorizes us to admit the certainty of the fact. The Jews have for
thousands of years, (and the patriarchs before the Jews probably did the
same,) observed a very significant rite in commemoration of the
creation, and another in commemoration of their preservation from one of
the plagues of Egypt. Why should we hesitate to admit the certainly of
these events?—Adam lived with Methuselah two hundred and forty years,
Methuselah lived with Shem, the son of Noah, ninety years, and Shem
lived with Abraham one hundred and fifty years; what apprehension can we
reasonably entertain that the account of the creation could either have
been forged or misrepresented, when it passed through so few hands
before reaching the founder of the Jewish nation? * * * Sceptical men
will do well to consider the nature and weight of historic evidence, not
only for the existence of God, but for His having made a revelation of
Himself to the Jewish nation. Let them examine freely and fully, and I
cannot but believe that they will come to the following conclusions:
that the creation is a fact; that the peopling of the world by the
descendants of Noah is a fact; that the Jewish theocracy is a fact; and
that these facts may be established as all past transactions of great
antiquity must be, by the authority of history, and especially by the
history of the Jews, whom God appears to have constituted witnesses
of His existence and providence, to all nations and in all ages.
Of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Tyrians, God has made or will make a full
end, ‘but the seed of Israel shall not cease from being a nation
before me for ever.’”
With these words of God I conclude my quotation
from Bishop Watson, and I will now ask you, my dear madam, a simple
question. Suppose for a moment, that the efforts of the societies for
the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, and of individuals, actuated
by the best, though I am bound to believe, mistaken motives, as yourself
and Charlotte Elizabeth, and countless others, both in private and
public; suppose these efforts, I say, to be crowned with success, and
behold the Jews in all the lands where they are now fulfilling
prophecy—in the land of the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Moslem, and
throughout Christendom, with one accord yielding to the persuasions and
arguments of the Christian missionary, who seeks them in all these
lands, and abandoning the everlasting covenant that God made with
their fathers; abandoning the observance of their time-honoured Sabbath,
of their Passover, and all their other sacred and peculiar rites;
intermarrying with the Christian and other nations, rearing their
children in all respects like other Christian children; in the course of
another century where would you seek for God’s witnesses? By the
mingling of their blood with that of the gentile nations, even their
physical peculiarities would have vanished; and that nation of whom God
has said, “Ye shall not cease from being a nation before me for
ever,” will be no where found except in history, and the truth of
Scripture will have vanished with them. Do you not now perceive, my
friend, that in endeavouring to convert Jews to Christianity, you are
applying the axe to the root of your own religion? I am convinced that
the redemption of the Jews is not to be effected by the efforts of
Christian missionaries. Let God work His own will with His “chosen
people.” Read the book of Deuteronomy, investing yourself for the time
with the feelings and faith of a child of Israel, and you will then see
what comfort we derive even from the sufferings that have followed our
disobedience; you will then feel that they are a guarantee for the
blessings that will surely follow our return to obedience. You will
there find the promise made to the descendants of those who heard it,
before we had yet reached the Promised Land, that our merciful Father,
even after our sin awarded dispersion through the lands of the earth,
will be “nigh unto us for all that we call upon Him for, if we seek
Him with all our hearts, and with all our souls.” This promise was
made to us, not to our fathers; it was made to us the children of
the dispersion; to me as one of those children. Let me then,
instead of abandoning, hold fast to the Banner of the Lord of Hosts, in
spite of the example of deserters, “though they be those of my own
household;” through the blandishments of friends and the persecutions
of foes, in the true spirit of a Hebrew maiden, I will live and die by
my inheritance; I will love the strangers, in obedience to the command of my God, as well as in accordance with the dictates of my own
heart, but I cannot become as one of them.
Do not think, my dear madam, that I am not grateful
for your kind intentions, and those of all my Christian friends who have
acted as you have done. I do sincerely thank you for them, but I could
not let this opportunity pass without attempting some vindication of my
despised faith. There are many other reasons besides that mentioned
above, for my refusing to become a Christian; but the argument that I
have used is the only one that I thought necessary or even proper to lay
before a Christian friend. Fear not for me. The Lord is my Shepherd, I
shall not want. * * * *
Thus, let me assure my Jewish readers, does the
Doric Pillar of our faith continue to emerge before the mental and moral
vision of its sincere followers, ever clearer and clearer from amidst
the clouds that its mistaken adversaries have collected around it. The
contemplation of its sublime and simple beauty fills the heart with
adoration, and with gratitude, that this beautiful, imperishable
monument is our own. On its summit reposes the glory of the one God
without associate. Around it wind steps on which are deeply and plainly
engraven the commandments, and statutes, and judgments, by observing
which the willing and obedient heart may reach to the glory enthroned
above, there to prostrate itself in blessed adoration. It is said that
Antigonus of Socho, a president of the great Sanhedrin under the
Asmonean dynasty, “taught the lofty doctrine of pure and disinterested
love and obedience to God, without regard to punishment or reward.” To
this “lofty doctrine” let the heart of every pure and enlightened
Israelite respond, as that which it recognises in its inmost recesses.
Not that I doubt God’s own word, so often repeated, of the fatal
consequences of disobedience and the blessed ones of obedience; but let
it not be alone the fear of the one nor the hope of the other that urges
us to obey. Our faith being firmly established, that the Decalogue and
all the other commandments were delivered to our fathers for their
observance and that of their children to the latest generation,
therefore may each child of Israel say, for my observance,
proceeded from God; need we desire another motive for obedience? God
commands—I obey.—And what does not obedience comprehend? and how
little, how much too little is it understood, and inculcated, and
insisted upon by most of our teachers of religion? Well may the Psalmist
exclaim, “There is none that doeth good, no not one.” And if this
was true in the days of David, how much more so in our own. So few is
the number of those who fill themselves with the spirit of those
commandments, which as a matter of habit are repeated without
reflection, and observed without feeling; so few are those who make the
word of God their study that their lives may be led by it. Yet it is the
word of the same Eternal God who did communicate His will and manifest
His presence to our ancestors. His protecting wing still hovers over
Israel His first-born; and His presence is as surely with us now, as it
was when we moved and sojourned by the pillar of fire and of cloud and
were fed by the bread of Heaven. We have ample instruction, let us learn
to apply it; and scattering every doubt, let us seek out, and cling to,
and live by the plain and holy precepts laid down for our guidance, to
conduct us, as the pillar of fire and cloud, through the wilderness of
life to the Promised Land of everlasting happiness. God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob, make perfect the faith of the children of the
faithful. “Open our eyes that we may see wondrous things in thy
law,” and let this be shown in our lives.
The
book of our holy law, the Torah, though not considered as devotional as
other parts of Scripture, richly abounds in materials for the most
hope-inspiring and comforting prayer, and for a faith which will bring
us into the closest communion with God that can possibly exist between
corporeal man and his incorporeal Creator. Thus may every devout child
of Israel who is rightly acquainted with this book, present himself
before the God of his fathers; the pure stream of his devotion flowing
from the unadulterated fountain struck by the rod of Moses, and issuing
at the word of God. Yes, thus may he pray with well-founded hopes of
obtaining an answer to his petition.—“Oh my God! Thou knowest that I
depend upon Thee for the maintenance and growth of all goodness within
me; Thou wilt permit goodness to displace evil; for Thou hast promised
to thy people Israel, that if we pray from all lands where we are a
living evidence of the truth of thy word, and where we are scattered few
in number in consequence of our disobedience, still to be nigh unto us
for all things that we call upon Thee for, if we turn unto Thee and seek
Thee with all our hearts. I, oh God of my fathers! am a child of Israel;
one of the scattered ones to whom this promise was made. With humble
thanks to Thee, I may with truth assert that I do seek Thee with all my
heart. The thing that I ‘call upon Thee for,’ is that I may live
ever conscious of thy presence; that the fear of Thee and the love of
Thee may influence the whole of my inward and outward life, my feelings
and actions. Thou hast promised, ‘if from thence, (this distant and
then perhaps unheard of land,) thou shall seek the Lord thy God, thou
shalt find Him, if thou shalt seek Him with all thy heart and with all
thy soul.’ With this
promise, in my Bible and in my heart, would it not be impious in me to
doubt that my God will grant the thing that I call upon Him for? The
fear of Thee, oh Lord, will preserve me from wilful disobedience. The
love of Thee will not suffer me to be satisfied with this negative duty.
It will seek to gratify itself and to testify itself in active
obedience. Thy word will be sought that it may be obeyed; and so far
from this obedience being irksome, each command, under the influence of
heavenly love, will be read and pondered on with lively gratitude, that
I am suffered to obey. Thus Oh Lord, will obedience consummate its own
perfection; for when I shall; as Thou hast commanded, love Thee
with all my heart and with all my soul, and with all my might, evil will
be eradicated from my heart, for the love of Thee will fill all its
lurking-places; and then shall I attain the summit and reward of
obedience, for I shall, as Thou hast commanded (and Thou dost not
command without enabling us to obey,) be holy, because the Lord my God
is Holy.
Thus,
in the devotions of the Israelite there need be no blind infatuation. His faith, while firm as rock, need never pass the bounds of
reason. In the plain and unchanging word of the God of Israel, who has
said, “I the Lord change not,” he may find a guarantee for his every
act of devotion, a clear comprehension of the relations he bears to this
great Being, and a sure foundation for all the hopes that he rests on
Him. To conclude, I hesitate not to express it as my firm belief, that
the life of a rational, devoutly obedient child of Israel, even now in
our dispersion, would he crowned with all the blessings promised to
obedience in our own God-given land; and that we see none so blessed is
because by none is this grand and comprehensive doctrine of OBEDIENCE
understood and practised. We may no longer offer sacrifices; but,
“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than the
fat of rams.” |
