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A Sermon, by the Rev.
Abraham Rice
Spoken on the Burial-Ground at
Baltimore, 29th of Ab, 5604.
The divine spark, which the Almighty has breathed
into the human body, which we commonly call SOUL, and also at times
designate by the name of CONSCIENCE, is, being an emanation of the
Divinity, like the Deity itself, inextinguishable; and we see in the
daily occurrences of life full often that the most worldly man is
occasionally compelled by the impulse of his own conscience to reflect
on his real destiny,—and is, in the midst
of his sensuality and passions, unexpectedly roused from his torpor to
reflect on something which can in no manner whatever harmonize with his
course of conduct. All this is the effect of conscience, or the soul,
which suffers not its high derivation to be extinguished nor forgotten,
and therefore makes its heavenly claims felt at the very time when man
fancies that he has succeeded in removing heaven, altogether from his
mental vision. This is the reason of our assembling this day upon the
place where lie those who have returned to their home. Our physical body
must have something physical by which it can have manifestly placed
before its eyes the evanescence of man, his short time and duration in
this world, and his future destiny; and for this purpose no better means
can be found than to abide by the cold grave; since here the lowest,
most abandoned, and the most yielding to his passions comes to the
consideration: “To what end will my acts at last bring me? What will
be the result of all my doings?” Here the proud must bend his pride,
when he sees that the meanest worm will at length sport in his body, and
that every thing human returns to the dust. Here the rich must some to
the acknowledgement that his riches can benefit him little or nothing,
quietly and motionless must he be lowered into the cold grave by the
side of the beggar. Here the doubter and the denier of his God must
confess at length that there must exist a future, an unending world;
because for this short and terminable life this world, so great and
beautiful, cannot have been created. Here, therefore, is the proper
place where the pure truths can find the best entrance into our souls;
and we have with good reason, therefore, assembled here to spend one
hour to speak concerning our heavenly or religious concerns. And for
this purpose do I choose two verses from this week’s portion, which we
read in our Synagogue. We read in Deuteronomy, 16:21, 22:
לא תטע
אשרה כל עץ
אצל מזבח ה׳
אלהיך אשר
תעשה תעשה
לך׃ ולא תקים
לך מצבה אשר
שנא ה׳
אלהיך׃ דבר׳
ט״ז כ״א כ״ב׃
“Thou
shalt not plant unto thyself a grove, nor any tree, near the altar of
the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make unto thyself. Neither shalt thou
set up unto thyself any statue, which the Lord thy God hateth.”
It
must naturally strike every one, that if a man is once so lost as to
worship idols, he will surely not erect them precisely near the altar of
God; for so soon as a man is guilty of idolatry, and denies the unity of
God, he will care little for the altar which stood in the precinct of
our temple. What could then have been the idea entertained by the law we
have quoted? And again the second verse, “Thou shalt not set up unto
thee any statue,” which usually led to idolatry, contains almost
precisely the same prohibition as the first. But in every word of our
law are hidden the deepest thoughts, and each word leads us to various
truths; and this is the case likewise in the present instance, as I will
endeavour to explain to you.
The
Almighty, before whom the future lies equally revealed with the past,
knew beforehand what occurrences would happen to his people in the long
period between the destruction of the temple and the times of our
Messiah. He knew beforehand that men would arise out of our own midst,
who would endeavour to impose false doctrines upon the people, and to
draw them from the straight path of virtue, adopting in its place false,
glittering, and unmeaning words, to denote their new procedure; as
Isaiah says, 49:17: “Those who destroy, and they who pull thee down,
have come forth from thyself;” and the Omniscient prepared us
beforehand for this state of things, and directed us to the way we
should enter upon and what course we should pursue. This time, and these
occurrences, now lie clearly before our eyes. We learn from the papers
that a great pulling down takes place with our brothers in Europe; that
even our chief and Rabbins, under cover of the passions, are
endeavouring absolutely to force false doctrines upon the people; so
that the common man, who cannot think farther than what stands clearly
before him, is induced to doubt whether these men will not carry their
measures so far, that our holy religion will have to suffer a great
change. But for the thinking Israelite all this is nothing uncommon; for
him there is no fear; he knows that the religion given by God, will,
like God himself, stand unchanged for ever; and that all these events
have occurred before this, and that Heaven only smiles over the
assumptions of the weak mortals; as David says in his second Psalm:
“The kings of the earth set themselves, and rulers take counsel
together, against the Lord and his anointed. Let us break their bands
asunder, and cast away from us their cords. He that sitteth in the
heavens will laugh, the Lord will hold them in derision.” See,
brethren, our king David, who already sleeps in his grave near three
thousand years, has already predicted all this in his prophetic spirit.
So also Jeremiah, when he says in his Lamentations, (2:14): “Thy
prophets have seen for thee vain and foolish things, and they have not
laid open thy iniquity to bring back thy captivity; but have seen for
thee false burdens and seductive doctrines.” As I have said, we have
witnessed these events before this, and I will make this clear and
intelligible to you. We had much to endure and to suffer in the days of
barbarism and ignorance for the sake of our religion, so that millions
were compelled to sacrifice their lives on account of our sacred faith.
What did we lose through these trials? The earthly body, for the souls
of those departed ascended untouched to their Father in heaven; the
barbarians could only destroy the body, but the soul returned beatified
to heaven. But now we are to witness a new and refined mode of
persecution; that is to say, our enemies wish to destroy the soul, they
wish to blind the ignorant masses by false doctrines,—they
wish to take from them their heavenly wealth, and give them in its stead
human laws adapted to the times and the fashion of the day. This is the
aim of the innovations, and the true meaning of the agitations which we
now witness, and is therefore properly a persecution of the soul. The
God, however, who caused us to be told through his prophet: "“
the Lord change not, and you sons of Jacob shall not be consumed;” and
“Fear not, worm of Jacob, men of Israel! I will assist thee, says the
Lord, and thy Redeemer is the holy One of Israel;”—the
God who caused us to be told through Moses: “And for all that, when
they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor
will I abhor them to destroy them utterly, to break my covenant with
them: for I am the Lord their God;”—the
same God will confound and render to naught all these devices of our
opponents.
You
will perhaps ask: “What induces these men all at once to disturb with
so much violence our holy religion, the inheritance from our fathers?”
It is therefore my duty to give you a clear answer to this question.
These men see the great abyss which separates us from other nations, and
draw thence the conclusion that we can form a friendly alliance with the
world only by throwing off our religion, and assimilating to the nations
of the earth. They wish, therefore, that we should exchange the heavenly
treasure which we have received as a gift from our Father in heaven, for
worldly and worthless goods; they wish, so to say, to anticipate the
Deity, and to improve the political condition of our brothers at the
expense of our religion, as though God, through the faith which He has
given us, were the only obstacle why we are not placed on an equality
with other nations; and they therefore strive to force upon the people
other laws, under the seductive pretence, “We wish only to purify our
religion!” Our text therefore admonishes us, “Plant thyself no
idolatrous tree near the altar of the Lord;” that is, the Deity has
beforehand drawn our attention to the fact, that these men will strive
to impose even the worst doctrines upon you under the cloak of religion,
and plant for you an idolatrous tree instead of the altar of God. It
says farther: “Thou shalt not set up for thyself any monument;” do
not imagine that human power is sufficient to give you a high standing
like the other nations, to improve your political condition through
human means only; no, so long as the Omniscient does not deem the age
ripe for our elevation, so long will all human exertions be vain and
fruitless labour. How can we, as honest men, undertake to make such an
exchange? In order to pass the short period of this life in peace and
contentment, would we be willing to sell our eternal rest, our soul?
would we be willing to degrade thus the name of Israel? O no! Justly
says Isaiah (11:7): “Hearken unto me, ye that know righteous, the
people in whose heart my law is; fear ye not the reproach of men,
neither be ye terrified at their revilings.”
If
even our holy religion prevents us from taking part in many worldly
affairs, we should not be led by this circumstance to barter it for
something of less value. Alone, as our adored God in heaven, do we stand
before the face of the world unshaken in our faith for thousands of
years; and alone we thus must remain; and even if mountains tumble into
heaps, or valleys be raised, we will remain, and our holy religion will
endure undestroyed, notwithstanding the assaults of its enemies.
Perhaps
you may ask, with some surprise: “What need we care in this country
about the dangers which threaten our brothers on the other side of the
ocean?” No, my dear friends, little will you have understood both the
object of this movement and the course it will take, if you argue in
this manner. Though the great ocean divides us from Europe, the onward
flight of such ideas is more rapid than that of the eagle; and whilst we
imagine that the fire rages only in a distant country, the sparks
scattered from the burning are already kindling a flame in our own
dwellings. This consideration it is which moves me to call your
attention to the state of things which I have sketched, and how each Jew
ought to be on his guard not to listen to seductive words, and how he
ought to remain steadfast and unshaken in his belief, though all the
goods of the world were offered to him. We have no right to alter one
iota in the whole law; for it is not the work of man, that it should
require amendment: it is derived from the Almighty, and, like the
Almighty, it is unchangeable. The only and legitimate pride which the
Jew bears in his heart is, that with us there are no sects,—that
the Jew in the East is like the one who lives in the West,—that
the religion in the South must be as it is in the North. This unity may
be lost through a single ill-advised alteration; every ignorant man
would daringly attempt to modify in the religion according to the
notions of his feeble intellect; and there would arise a multitude of
sects without any parallel. But no! O God, thy name is one, and thy
people Israel will remain one, and never will such wicked attempts
succeed; they may be able to seduce away the feeble and vacillating, but
the firm and upright will stand unshaken to everlasting.
Never
will the real Israelite suffer himself to be drawn away from his
religion, or swerve from a part of the same by the offer of worldly
possessions. Consider, brethren, what Isaiah says (52:2,3): “Shake
thyself from the dust, arise, sit down, O Jerusalem! loose thyself from
the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus saith the
Lord, Ye have been sold for naught, and without silver shall ye be
redeemed.” Here the prophet expresses himself clearly, that we are not
to receive our freedom and our worldly prosperity at the expense of
religion. Whenever the time of our freedom arrives, it will proceed from
the Deity direct; and our holy religion is to be with us in our contest
for freedom. Therefore says the same prophet (Ib. 6, 7): “Therefore
shall my people know my name; therefore—on
that day, that I who speak it am present.” Meaning, for this reason,
will my people know my name; and the people that know my name will
understand how to distinguish between true and false freedom; for on the
day when true freedom shall appear, I will, says God, prove myself, who
have spoken the promises, as present on earth. And then how “beautiful
will be upon the mountains the feet of him who bringeth good tidings,
that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that
publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” For
then will the steps of the messenger of good tidings be wonderful and
admirable; because he will speak only of peace and union among all
Israel; he will announce prosperity, and proclaim salvation; and such a
salvation proceeds only from the Omniscient: but not from froward and
ambitious men, who endeavour to pull down the divine structure which has
stood for thousands of years.
Remember
now, beloved friends, what I have unfolded to you this day, and be firm
on the day of danger, since through firmness only, and a true insight in
these dangerous agitations, can man be safe, so as not to enter upon the
ways of error. And justly and confidently will we wait for the salvation
of God until the proper time comes; as says Isaiah farther: “For the
Lord goeth before you, and your rearward is the God of Israel.” Amen. |
