THE HIGHER ANTI-SEMITISM

THERE is among the peoples of the world which has preserved its individuality throug the ages with remarkable persistence. This ple is among the nations, and of them, but in some way apart from them. Up to a within the memory of men still living, mem of this people were set apart as unworthy possess all the rights of citizenship in all 1 in which they dwelt; even at the present da majority of them are still debarred from higher rights of human beings. The only ex or explanation for this discrimination ag them was that they refused to bow down in House of Rimmon, to worship strange gods, to give up their way of thinking about the h est things which had approved itself as and true to their fathers. Rather than abar that faith they have, for the past millennium a half, suffered continuously contumely and m

segregation, and from time to time torture and even death, while at successive periods they have been obliged to shake off the soil of their native land and seek refuge in other countries which for the time were less intolerant. These men

are known by the name of Jews.

'Tis a little people, but it has done great things. When in the land in which it first came to national consciousness, it created a conception of the Highest Being of the universe, which has been adopted in essence by the foremost races of humanity. It had but a precarious hold on a few crags and highlands between the desert and the deep sea, yet its thinkers and sages with eagle vision took into their thought the destinies of all humanity, and rang out in clarion voice a message of hope to the down-trodden of all races. Claiming for themselves and their people the duty and obligations of a true aristocracy, they held forth to the peoples ideals of a true democracy founded on right and justice. Their voices have never ceased to re-echo around the world, and the greatest things that have been done to raise men's lot have been done always in the spirit, often in the name, of the Hebrew prophets.

Nor did their beneficial activities cease when they were torn away from their own land by all-powerful Rome. For nearly two thousand years they have taken their share in all the movements that have made the modern European man. At times they have helped to spread culture from one nation to another; at others, they have helped to light it anew in a fresh land. On some occasions they have even been leaders in these movements, but mostly they have been content to take their share in the cultural development of their fellow-men, contributing to it by the qualities which their unique position among the nations had developed in them. In the intricate warp and woof of civilization Jewish threads have been at all times constituent parts of the pattern, and to attempt to remove or unravel them would destroy the whole design. By these contributions they have earned their right to continue to work for the European culture that they have helped to develop.

Yet, though the Jews have taken their due share in the culture and economic development of the nations among whom they dwelt, they have been pursued by hatred and persecution throughout the Diaspora. The origins of this

ཨབབ་་ལཨ་བ་

All imperialistic systems necessarily te toleration of the different creeds of the races, which they weld into empires. find traces of antipathy to Jews in great ancient empires, Persian, H Roman, as reflected in the Book of Es Books of Maccabees, and in Josephus Apion. Other aliens became natives couple of generations; other enslaved became freedmen, and their children full other religious cults were regarded as the Persian, in the Hellenistic, and in the empires; other races or sections were pe to be autonomous within limits if only th vided their due quota of taxes and recruits Jews alone stood out and apart from the among whom they settled, and were re with disfavor by the ruling classes and, consequence, with hatred or contempt b mob. The ancient city-states had their bond of union in the common worship o local deity, and no Jew, while he remain Jew, could share in this worship. Other zens, together with this civic cult, could con adhesion to widespread national or imp

deities; the Jew alone worshipped One God. He was the sole exception to the increasing tendency of the ancient world to syncretize local, national, and imperial deities into one Pantheon.

It is probable, however, that there was much less anti-Semitism among the peoples of antiquity than might appear from the scanty records of Jew-hatred, which consist mainly of contemptuous or inimical references by satirists like Juvenal, or embittered partisans like Tacitus. Men cannot live together in the common occupations of every-day life without engendering kindly feelings of communion. The wide spread of Jewish propagandism in the early Roman empire, of which there is increasing evidence, is sufficient proof of the friendly bonds between Jew and Gentile. The quick spread of Christianity among the resulting proselytes was a striking result of these friendly relations.' But for the action of the Church these assimilative tendencies would doubtless have continued till Jews would have been distinguished from their

1The map of the early Christian churches attached to the seventh volume of Renan, Origines du Christianisme, is still the best representation of the Jewish Diaspora of the second century.