animus of prejudice than the zeal of scholarship. Now, as a matter of fact, these primitive facts and forces do not explain Judaism. They represent the original Semitism, the very cult against which Hebraism, in contradistinction, struggled so persistently and over which Hebrew Prophetism at length triumphed, transforming in its victory the very strongholds of Ba'al into a citadel of Jahweh. Hebraism as opposed to Semitism-that is the corect antithesis, and in this sense Dr. Hirsch speaks with profound truth, when he says that Hebraism, as such, is the very first anti-Semitism.

But we may go further still. We may even concede that the crude beliefs and gross superstitions themselves were the original sources of many of our accepted symbols, beliefs and practices. This, in no way, invalidates the claims of the latter-nay, it gives, on the contrary, a new value to the former, for we now know that we can understand the lower only through the higher, not the higher through the lower. In the real doctrine of Evolution the last explains the first, and not vice versa. The very illustration that Dr. Morgenstern used, in describing the change of some coarse rites into hallowed ceremonies, should have suggested to him the fact that at bottom "Evolution presupposes Involution." He spoke of the caterpillar and the butterfly. Now, if the caterpillar did not in itself already contain the potentialities of a butterfly it could not become a butterfly at all. Similarly in the very perversions and superstitions of early beliefs there must have been some latent spiritual impulse, some inherent upward reaching, some "groping above it for light, that climbs to a soul," finally. Otherwise, no evolution from them to something higher could have resulted. You cannot get from something explicitly what was not there already implicitly. Any other explanation is purely a prestidigitator's trick. They, the primitive cultes are, as it were, the roots deep down in the dark earth; the finer and fuller faiths are as the leaves and flowers and fruits that grow from them, heavenward. This, it seems to me, the author of the paper did not altogether grasp or at least did not sufficiently emphasize. He gave me the impression, perhaps wrongly, of believing in the Naturalistic standpoint altogether. His treatment tended to level the higher down to the lower, instead of lifting the lower towards the higher.

With regard, now, to the second proposition, viz, the pitiful political weakness of the Israelites. Let him, who will, draw what satisfaction he may from this fact. I feel like the previous speaker that the applause that greeted this point in the paper was out of place. Whatever our individual attitude may be towards the Herzl or Zangwill programme, we cerainly should not allow our antiZionism to make even one of us greet, as a fine sentiment, the statement that our ancestors never had, nor could their descendants ever have, capacity as an independent nation. Even if such crowing were becoming it would still be a question whether it is not a little premature. For, granting fully that Israel in history never stood out politically, it does not follow either that the state was or is a negligible factor in the religious development and destiny of Israel. In one place in his paper Dr. Morgenstern states that only the smallest minority of the Jewish exiles returned from Babylonia, and this fact he uses as an indication that it is not necessary that Israel have a separate national existence. Now, as a matter of fact, it was from these very few, who did come back to Palestine and who formed the Second Jewish Commonwealth, that the finer and fuller development of Judaism flowered. I am not arguing either for or against Zionism. I do insist though that we must not draw any delusive comfort for our anti-Zionism from the fact that Higher Biblical Criticism goes to prove that we were never, even in the palmiest days, more than a petty state. It may or may not be that Judaism can now dispense with organization as a nation and the possession of a land. But it cannot be denied that, unless there had been an Israelitish state to begin with and a second Jewish Commonwealth to follow, it is hardly likely that the Chosen People could have developed, through a Holy Nation, into a 5 noɔɔ or Community of Israel.

We come now to the third and last proposition of the paper, the fact, viz, that Higher Biblical Criticism restores to us the Old Testament as our very own. It is true that modern scholarship proves that the Christological references read into our Bible are wholly unwarranted. That is, of course, a gain; but it is only a negative one at best, for it does not make the essential claims of Christianity

any less valid even to the Higher Critic himself. We ourselves have on the whole today a different conception of the Messiah from that either of the Bible or the Talmud. Yet we count ours, none the less, a legitimate development. By the same line of reasoning, by which we justify our interpretation as a natural unfolding from the Old Testament, the Christian theologian can justify his New Testament interpretation. Read, for example, the commentary on Deutero-Isaiah in the Cambridge edition. Prof. Skinner is the author, and he plants himself firmly on the standpoint of modern scholarship. And yet, accepting as he does the conclusions of Higher Biblical Criticism, he is, nevertheless, able to take the famous "Servant of the Lord" passages and give them an ultimate Christological application. He frankly admits, nay, gives all the arguments necessary to prove that the prophet himself meant by the "Servant" none other than the people Israel, the Ideal nation, personified, through the heightened imagination of the seer, as an individual. But, so Skinner goes on, in effect, to say: The artist builded better than he knew; there were implications in the prophet's words larger than the prophet himself realized; in ways undreamed of and unhoped for by the second Isaiah, the spiritual development of history, under God, found the grand fulfillment of his ideal, not in the nation Israel, but in the person of the man of Nazareth. It is no answer to this form of the argument to say that, by the Higher Critic's own confession, the Old Testament never had Jesus in mind. Of course it didn't; but neither did it have in mind many conceptions, into which we ourselves, on the justification of progress, have put a different content and intent from that originally contemplated by the Bible. Inasmuch as we use this principle ourselves as valid, we cannot object to its use by advanced Christian theologians for their own conclusions. It does not seem to me so sure, therefore, that Higher Biblical Criticism necessarily gives us back the Bible as our very own.

In all that I have said above there was no intention to call into question Higher Biblical Criticism as a method. Higher Biblical Criticism means simply applying to the study and understanding and estimate of the Bible the canons of literary and historical science, by

which alone we can test the place and purport of any document. Whatever is intrinsically true and good need apprehend no lessening of its value from the most searching investigation or from the strictest criterions. No! it is not to Higher Criticism, as such, that I have objected, but to certain deductions from it. It needs no praise of mine to call attention to the knowledge and scholarship displayed in Dr. Morgenstern's paper, for its erudition speaks from every page. I did feel impelled, however, to take issue with what I thought was the tendency of his conclusions, which conclusions, as I said at the outset, seemed to welcome as a support of our position as Reform Jews what, at the bottom, was a depreciation of the Bible. We need therefore to have pointed out to us (and this is what I missed in the paper) the positive significance of the Bible, to us, now that Higher Criticism is having its say. Our duty, I take it, is to show from pulpit and in classroom that we can accept the fundamental principles of Biblical science, and, at the same time, find in our Bible something infinitely more than a mere outgrown stage in the development of Judaism. Dr. Hirsch rightly says (see his discourse on “Judaism and the Higher Criticism,” p. 15) “Criticism merely indicates the process of the revelation, but cannot reach into the field of revelation itself. That Israel came into the possession of the Truth is a fact of revelation; how it came into possession of it is the story which Higher Criticism aims to tell." The question of authorship and origin does not affect what is true in the ethical or religious ideals or inspirational power of Psalmist or Prophet. Tested indeed by all the canons of criticism, the Bible remains the Bible still, and is shown to be no less a divine revelation because it is also seen to be so intensely a human revelation.

E

CONFERENCE SERMON.

BY RABBI WILLIAM ROSENAU, PH. D., Baltimore, Md.

WHAT OF THE PROMISE?

When we shall disperse after our convention and return to our respective homes we hope to carry away suggestions which shall help us to solve our common problems. One of these problems I shall undertake to discuss in my sermon today. My text is: "I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the firmament and as the sand which is upon the shore of the sea." (Gen. 22:17).

והרבה ארבה את זרעך ככוכבי השמים וכחול אשר על שפת הים

These words are reported to have been addressed by God to the patriarch. What a glorious promise! How the heart of Abraham must have throbbed with joy! Think of it! A small tribe was said to become as countless as the stars in the firmament and as the grains of sand on the seashore!

It seems that already in grayest antiquity people believed in the safety of numbers. Majorities were invested with prestige, infiuence and majesty to which a hopeless minority could never attain.

But what of the promise? Has it been fulfilled? Not yet! In the centuries which make up Israel's past two powerful factors militated against its fulfillment. The one was prohibition of conversion to Judaism among non-Jews; the other the persecution of our fathers at the hands of Islam and Christianity. Nor do we see signs of its speedy fulfillment now, that the Jew is permitted to preach his truths unmolested and that the ever-broadening culture of society is making inhuman measures mere memories.

I doubt whether there is a Jew, though he be ever so zealous, who laments that Israel does not consist of countless millions.

Not by might, nor" לא בחיל ולא בכח כי אם ברוחי אמר יהוה צבאות

by power, but by My spirit says the

Lord of hosts." (Zach. 4:6),