A Significant Address

It may be questioned if any body of religious thought is undergoing more rapid change than that of Judaism. The shameful persecution to which the Hebrew people are still subject in some countries, and at the hands of so-called Christians, finds a significant rebuke in the frequent and emphatic expressions of veneration and love for the character of the founder of Christianity by the more progressive Jews.

Rabbi Hirsch of Chicago has recently said in a public address, we "regard Jesus as one of the noblest spiritual teachers that ever appeared in the world. . . . The so-called disciples of Jesus have persecuted the Jews for ages and the Jews have borne these persecutions with lamblike gentleness and silence. If Jesus Christ should return to the earth to-morrow he would be welcomed in every Jewish synagogue in the land, and every Jew would say with David 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in.' " It is of further interest to note that this thought was expressed before the Epworth League of the St. James Methodist Church of Chicago. Verily "the world do move!"

One other passage from the Rabbi's address will be a surprise to many. He said, "The Jews do not believe at all in original sin and inherited depravity. They believe that every man is a responsible free agent, and is not involved in the guilt of his fathers or children. . . . They do not believe the story of the fall of man in the book of Genesis in its literal sense, . . . they consider the story of the Garden of Eden an allegory."

A very large body of Christian believers who have tried to explain the suffering of the innocent as an incident of the law of heredity which is of divine ordering and therefore good, may be led by the Rabbi's words to reexamine the teaching of the Old Testament upon that subject, and if so, they will find in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel the pronounced and specific condemnation of the claim that this law is of God, or that it expresses His purpose or government: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son." This teaching is in keeping with the universal recognition of the divine justice, and on it Rabbi Hirsch evidently grounds his faith. Not infrequently religious critics refer to the teaching of Christian Science,—that the so-called law of heredity is an error of mortal mind,—in terms which would indicate that they are quite unfamiliar with the Scripture referred to, and with the interpretation of the Old Testament by its most devoted and intelligent students among the Jewish people.

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