Published weekly. Price $1.50 a year, or 5 cents single copy. Entered at the Post-office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter. The Minister's Hand-book. For Christenings, Weddings, Sacred Songs for Public Worship. A Hymn and Tune Leather .75 1.00 1.50 20 cents. Per doz., 1.50 30 2.50 Unitarian Catechism. With an Introduction by E. A. Horton. 64 Cloth, Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in "Unity Pulpit.' single copies, 5 cents. Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. JUDAISM AND ITS HOPES.* SINCE Judaism is the stalk from whose topmost branch there blossomed the young Christianity, we need to understand a little of the origin and growth of the parent stem, in order that we may know the relation in which it stood to that which followed it. I propose, then, in making this as clear to you as I can in the time allotted me this morning, to run over, first, the traditional course of the development of the Jewish religion, and then give you what I conceive to be the historic line of its growth, and so lead from that up to the time when the little child was born in Nazareth of Galilee, whose teachings and whose life were to change the course of the history of the world. Traditionally, it had been held always to be true that the ancestors of the Hebrews from the very beginning had a clear knowledge of the one true God and a clear revelation of his will. From the time when the story tells us that God walked and talked with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day until the last revelation that was delivered to his people in the years preceding the birth of Jesus, all the way along, the traditional story tells us the people were in constant and comparatively unbroken communication with God, so that they knew him and knew his will. After the death of Adam there was, one after another, a long line of patriarchs still in communion with God, still keeping unbroken this divine revelation. At last Abraham appears, the traditional forefather of the Hebrew race, living so close to Jehovah that God comes down and visits him, talks with him, eats with him, and calls him his friend. Then there are his de Stenographically reported. scendants, Isaac and Jacob, until the sojourn in Egypt. Here they are in bondage indeed for a time; but the light of truth does not die out until Moses, especially called and chosen of God, appears to lead the people out of captivity and through their wanderings in the wilderness. When he dies on the border of the river Jordan, his power of leadership is transferred to his successor, Joshua, who completes the conquest and leads the people over into the Promised Land. Then there appears a series of judges divinely commissioned and appointed until, when the people are ripe for it, Saul is chosen to be their king. He proves unworthy, and is set aside; and the young David is established in his place. But, in spite of political quarrels, divisions, conquests and captivities, the people never lose their hold on the one line of truth that has been committed to them. They are carried captives to Babylon, where they remain forty years. After they return, they rebuild the temple, and then continue to struggle for the one thing that has been committed to them down to the years of the appearance of Jesus and the destruction of the temple which followed within a few years after his death. This, I say, is the traditional outline representing the claim that at the beginning there was a clear revelation of the one God and of the one true religion, bleared, obscured, departed from, but never lost. All through this time God was sending messengers to call the people back from their wanderings. He was sending prophets with divine words on their lips who should outline the course of their development, teaching what was to come and the relation in which they were to stand to it. It was claimed that there was a clear revelation of the coming of the Messiah, so that, when Jesus was born, the Jews ought to have known, or could have known, if they had had true spiritual illumination with which to read their Scriptures, that he was the Messiah who had been promised them from the very beginning, from the time when it was said to Eve that her son should bruise the head of the serpent. This, I say, is the traditional line of |