labor. It is absurd for a man who is in pursuit of honors to flee from labors by which honors are acquired.

—The extremity of happiness is to rest unchangeably and immovably on God alone.

-When you are entreated to pardon offenses, pardon willingly those who have offended against you, because indulgence given in requital for indulgence, and reconciliation with our fellow-servants, is a means of diverting the divine anger.

-The virtuous man is a lover of his race, merciful and inclined to pardon, and never bears ill-will toward any man whatever, but thinks it right to surpass in doing good rather than in injuring.

-Let us not fear the diseases which come upon us from without, but those offenses on which account diseases come, diseases of the soul, rather than of the body,

MODERN JUDAISM.

CHURCH AND STATE.

Religion is universal; theology is exclusive. Religion is humanitarian; theology is sectarian. Religion unites mankind; theology divides it. Religion is love, broad and allcomprising as God's love; theology preaches love and practices bigotry. Religion looks to the moral worth of man ; theology to his creed and denomination. Religion teaches us, as Vice-President Colfax so beautifully expresses it, “The common fatherhood of God, and the common brotherhood of man;" theology teaches predestination, eternal damnation, and that we rather should fear the anger of God, than trust to His paternal love and mercy. Religion, therefore, is light and love, and virtue and peace, unadulterated and immaculate; but theology is the apple of discord, which disunites and estranges us from one another, The sorrowful fact is that we have too

much of narrow-minded and narrow-hearted theology, and too little of the spirit of true religion.

The same difference now exists between the modern State and Church. The State is humanitarian; the Church sectarian. The State, in conformity with the continuous advancement of the human race, must be progressive; the Church, in accordance with its creed, must be stationary. The State looks after and watches over the interests of all its membere; the Church looks first of all to its own interests and those of its communicants. The State advances and progresses as far as man is able to advance; the Church must discourage any criticism that may sap the foundation of its doctrinal structure.

It is quite an erroneous impression, a complete misrepresentation of facts, that the State is nothing but a national police system for the protection of persons and property. ** This definition is the medieval one, and reminds us of those times in which the Church assumed the government of all the political and spiritual interests of the world, and the State was nothing but its obedient executive.

*

But the modern State is quite another organization. * It says all men are created equal, and hence it breaks down all castes and privileges; erases all titles by "divine right,” be they aristocratic or hierarchic, and recognizes but one government, established "by the people and for the people." The modern State says, man is entitled to liberty, and therefore grants freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. The modern State says, all men are entitled to happiness, and therefore abolishes serfdom and slavery, and grants to every one free exercise of rights and powers, so long as they do not interfere with the rights of his fellow-men. The modern State says, every one has a right to worship his Creator according to his best knowledge, and his conscience, and therefore does not meddle with religious affairs, and leaves them to the care and direction of the individual. Civil and religious liberty, in all their various ramifications, are the children of the modern State. These blessings, which are considered the

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greatest boon of mankind, and the glory of modern civilization, were bestowed on the present generation by the State and not the Church. * The modern State, therefore, is not a national police force, but the noble representative of all those glorious ideas which distinguish our age and civilization from that of past centuries.

The Church treats its votaries as minors, the State wants free and independent men. Sectarian schools educate sectarian pupils; free schools educate freemen-citizens; and hence the State is better fitted to advance the interests of humanity at large than the Church, and every true and marked progress has only been achieved since the State has emancipated itself from the Church, and become separated and divorced from it.

And what State has laid down these humanitarian principles more clearly, more emphatically and unequivocally, than the United States, our God-blessed country?

Where is there a Constitution, and a Declaration of Independence, like that framed by the immortal men of 1776?

**

Do not point to vile politicians and tricky agitators. There are sinners in the State, no less than in the Church. With all their vices and corruptions they cannot detract from the merit and sublimity of the modern, progressive State. They are but excressences of society, only to flourish for awhile; their days are numbered; and when the people arouse, they will be scattered, and vanish like chaff before a whirlwind.

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We assert, with our old Rabbis, "that the good of all denominations will participate in the future bliss of Heaven." * * And we assert this, because we believe with Moses and Jesus, that the supreme command of all religion is: "Love thy fellow-man as thyself," without distinction of race, or color, or creed. These words comprise all the law and the prophets, and this must be the corner-stone of all future religion. Hence it is our duty to see that justice be meted out to all; that liberty be granted to all; that the inalienable rights with which the Creator has endowed man be enjoyed by all; and that

the old golden rule be observed by all: Do unto others as you wish to be done by.

*

*

This is the relation which modern Judaism assumes toward the modern State, and especially towards the laws of our beloved country. Hence we have given up all idea of ever returning to Palestine and establishing there an independent nationality. Hence we have given up our sectarian schools, and send our children to the free schools; for we wish to educate them as thorough Americans, from their childhood, to fraternize with their future fellow-citizens.-Rabbi Lilienthal, Cincinnati, Ohio.

ETHICS AND POLITICS.-Reason.

With the universal God and the universal standpoint, universal ethics and politics, as the necessary sequences thereof, must have come; and they did come in the brief words, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," which Confucius, Hillel, and Jesus expounded by the golden rule; and "God is king;" i. e., the absolute wisdom, and justice is the Sole Sovereign of the human race. In principle, nothing can be added thereto, nothing diminished thereof. If man exists only inasmuch as he is in God, in love, wisdom, and justice, and all else is momentary, temporal and perishable, then he truly lives only so far as he loves, thinks, and acts wisely and justly. If all men partake of the same divine nature, then all are of one nature: they are one. Hence the individual is not a unit, the race is. The individual cannot love himself, think and act wisely and justly to himself; he can do all this to the race only of which he is a part. Hence he can live only in love to the human race. Again, if the race is a unit, inasmuch as all partake of the same divine nature, then none but God can be king, because he is the majesty, the centre of all excellencies diffused in the human family. If I must love my neighbor, how shall I tyrannize over him? No man possesses absolute wisdom and justice.

If

So we have reached the ideals, the final object of historical development, as laid down in the Bible. The people of Israel, in the course of their history, went by all standpoints, from rude fetichism to the highest absolute theism; from the barbarous slaughtering of the Canaanites to the supreme law of humanity; through all forms of religion, ethics, and politics, to the highest and universal standpoint in each. The Bible stories must be understood as phases of development, particular standpoints, temporized and localized, which must be divested of their specialties, to receive their respective positions in history, and their proper place in relation to the universal idea. Joshua supposed God had commanded him or Moses to accomplish the extinction of the seven nations, he did so from a temporal and local standpoint, formed by the state of civilization and force of circumstances at the period. If the Jew saw in God the mere God of Israel or of Palestine, Paul saw Him in a son of God, and John in the Logos; they temporized and localized the Deity, as those do in ethics who claim justice in heaven and on earth, only for themselves and their friends. All particular standpoints, all phases of development, are represented in Israel's history; and all of them must be passed through by the entire human family, to reach the ideals in religion, ethics, and politics, as set forth in our Bible.

Who shall guide man in this path to perfection? How are we to distinguish the universal from the temporal or local standpoint, God from the gods, justice from compacts of selfishness? History itself as little as the Bible can guide us in this matter, for they contain both the ideal, and the history of development towards it, the universal and all particular standpoints, truth and the various shades of aberrations. If the Bible is to guide, what are we to do with its immoral incidents, the unreasonable tales and myths, the local or temporal presentations of Deity? The religious sentiment called faith cannot guide, for it is evidently uncertain. Whence the various and contradictory views of the Christian sects, all claiming the guidance of faith, if it is reliable? By faith, crusades were organized, inquisitions