THE JEW: GOD’S DIAL.
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The last Zionist Congress, in Carlsbad, brought vividly before the world
the immemorial, the indestructible, the irrepressible Jew. There sat the chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, with
long white beard, in flowing, picturesque robes; near by sat an excited, ill-kempt
Marxian Jew, voluble with “labour” interjections;
and yonder (says an eye-witness) stood a tall, modern, vivacious woman,
speaking perfect Hebrew but for a slight American accent. It is the International Jew, dispersed through
all lands, yet laden with an immense destiny, and standing with face turned toward Jerusalem
and the dawn. And, the Congress spoke in
Hebrew. For nearly twenty centuries
Hebrew has been dead. After the fall of
the Temple in
A.D. 70 it ceased to be a spoken language. In December, 1922, died Eliezer ben Yehudah,
who, by forty years’ toil, and through storms of anger and anathema - the Jews
refusing even to take his dead wife to the Mount of Olives - restored Hebrew to
Israel. “During the first
twenty years of his life in Palestine,”
says the Jerusalem Correspondent of the Times (Jan. 1, 1924), “he was looked upon as crazy. But he lived to see the world of his dream: he
lived to see a census return according to which 96 per cent. of
the Jews of Palestine declared Hebrew to be their mother-tongue.”
THE JEW’S SURVIVAL
The Jew to-day is the purest-blooded people, and the proudest-descended race, in the world: it is a
marvel of history that exactly as no race has been able to assimilate the Jew,
so no race, universally dispersed as he is, has ever survived but the Jew: what he was when Tyre fell, or
the Temple went up in smoke and fire, that he is to-day. His features bear a portrait three thousand
years old. “Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah
is fallen: the show of their countenance
doth witness against them” (Isa. 3: 9). Language,
literature, customs, traditions are identically what they were two thousand
years ago; there is not a country on the globe where their fifteen millions are
not to be found, while in their ancient home, Asia, not half a million remain;
yet they are a compact, coherent, undiluted Gulf Stream in the ocean of
mankind. It is the fulfilment of Jehovah’s
word :- “If thou wilt not fear this glorious and fearful name
the Lord thy God, the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from
the one end of the earth even unto the other”
(Deut. 28: 58, 64). As someone has remarked:-
“Behold the Jew, and tremble; behold the Jew, and
believe; behold the Jew, and rejoice.”
THE JEW’S VIRILITY
One of the wonders of to-day is the virility of the Jew. The Jewish Chronicle estimates that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Jews
numbered about a million; at the commencement of the nineteenth century, five
millions; half a century later, seven millions; now, some fifteen millions: and
- a perfect replica of Israel
in Egyprt - the land
of Israel’s chief martyrdom (Russia)
is the land of her swiftest increase. Have
we realized Israel’s
war strength? Eight hundred and four
thousand Jews served in the War in the armies of all nations; that is, four per
cent. of all Jewry fought, while but three per cent. of
those Gentile nations that were involved in the War. So their individual virility is astounding. Though as small a nation as Korea or the Arab,
yet the thinker who dominates current philosophy is a Jew - Bergson; the star of
contemporary science is a Jew - Einstein;
the financier who held post-War Germany in his palm was a Jew - Hugo Stinnes;
the soldier who has mastered mighty Russia is a Jew - Trotsky; and the greatest actress of all time, but recently dead,
is a Jewess - Sarah Bernhardt.
THE JEW’S BIGOTRY
The Jew’s bigotry remains one of the granite facts of the
world. Spinoza, one of the founders of modern infidelity, began by
apostasy from the Law; and his excommunication is but a sample of that which
awaits every soul that leaves Moses. “The day of excommunication at length arrived,” says Prof. J. K. Hosmer,
“and a vast concourse assembled to witness the awful
ceremony. It began by the silent and
solemn lighting of a quantity of black wax candles, and by opening the
tabernacle wherein were deposited the books of the Law of Moses. Then came the final
anathema. ‘With the judgment of the angels and of the saints, we excommunicate,
cut off, curse and anathematize Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the
elders and all this holy congregation, in the presence of the holy books: by
the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are written therein, with the
anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses
which are written in the law. Cursed be
he by day and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in
waking, cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him,
the wrath and the fury of the Lord shall henceforth be kindled against him and
shall lay upon him all the curses written in the Book of the Law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun,
and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel, with
all the curses of the firmament which are written in the Law. And we warn you that none may speak with him
by word of mouth nor by writing, nor show any favour unto him, nor he under one
roof with him, nor come within four cubits of him, nor read any paper composed
by him.’ As the words were uttered, the lights were
suddenly immersed in blood, a cry of religious horror and execration burst from
all, and in that solemn darkness, and to those solemn curses they shouted Amen,
Amen.”
It is an indisputable fact that a painful proportion of
Bolshevist Commissars are Jews. Disraeli said that in his day Jews were
at the head of all the secret societies of Europe.
Such apostates from Judaism will make
their own compact (Dan. 11: 30) with the
Antichrist. Yet who drove them
underground by Jew-baiting and pogrom? who created Shylock by forbidding him,
in the middle ages, any calling but trade? who, by
idolatrous icon and image, have still further alienated him from his own
idol-hating Jehovah? When Gortchakoff, the
Russian premier, described the Jew to Bismarck
as a scourge upon any people, Bismarck
retorted,- “He is what you
have made him.”
THE JEW’S TRAVAIL
To‑day's agony of the Jew is almost incredible. The entire Jewish population of the Russian
Western War Zone - some million and a half - were evacuated into the interior
of Russia;
old men and infants, the sick, the dying, the insane, at
twelve hours’ notice. “The massacres of the
Jews in the Ukraine,”
says Sir Horace Rumbold,
British Minister at Warsaw,
in a report to the Foreign Office, “can find, for
thoroughness and extent, no parallel except in the massacres of the Armenians.”
In July, 1923, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Dr. Adler, said:- “Wholesale slaughter and burials alive, rape and torture, became not
merely commonplaces, but the order of the day. There were pogroms that lasted a week; and in
several cases the systematic and diabolic torture and outrage and carnage were
continued for a month. In many populous
Jewish communities, there were no Jewish survivors left to bury the dead, and
thousands of Jewish wounded and killed were eaten by dogs and pigs; in others,
the Synagogues were turned into charnel houses by the pitiless butchery of
those who sought refuge in them. If We
add to the figures quoted above, the number of those indirect victims who, in
consequence of the robbery and destruction that accompanied these massacres,
were swept away by famine, disease, exposure and all manner of privations - the
dread total will be very near half a million human beings.”
THE JEW’S RETURN
It is manifest that the granite Jew is being reserved for a
gigantic destiny which slowly unfolds before our eyes: for the Jew is God’s dial; and when
he is in the Land, the Dawn will be in the sky. Dr. Herzl told a friend that it was the despair created in
his soul by universal Anti-Semitism in which Zionism was born. The gates of Palestine
have swung back for the returning Jew for the first time since, nineteen
centuries ago, a million Jews were massacred on the
hills of Judea – “I hope,” says Viscount Cecil (New Palestine, May 4, 1923), “that Jerusalem will yet become the seat of the League of Nations. I have always believed that the city in which
the Prophet Isaiah first proclaimed the idea of world peace is the ideal centre
for the League of Nations, whence its
influence for peace, goodwill and amity will radiate throughout the world.”
It is said that, since the War, and for
the first time since the Zealots fell in the defence of the Temple,
a Jewish army, numbering not less than half a million men and well equipped
with munitions and machine-guns, has been secretly organized in Russia.
Rabbi
Levy, of Tresmont Temple, New York, says:- “The Temple at Jerusalem will he
rebuilt, or possibly the Mosque of Omar which now stands upon that site, will
simply be cleansed and rededicated to Jehovah; for, according to the strictest
Jewish Law, any place of worship may be transformed into a Jewish synagogue or
Temple by removing all idols, and rededicating it to the God of Israel. It is more than possible that the very
religious will insist upon tearing down this Mosque and erecting a Temple as much like
Solomon’s as is now possible.” It
is extraordinary that in a hymn in the Jewish Prayer Book are these words:- “Shake thyself from the dust,
arise, put on the garment of thy glory, 0 my people! through the
son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, draw thou nigh unto my soul, redeemed
it!” As one of the Zionist Halutzim - devoted Judaists intent on orthodoxy rather than
on wealth - said to Mr. Rohold:- “Oh that we could
only know of a truth who this Jesus is, and what is his true relation to us
wanderers!”
THE JEW’S CONVERSION
But it is on one golden spot in Jewry that God’s eye now
supremely rests. Rabinowitz, the noted Jewish
Christian lawyer, visiting America
in 1893, wrote:- “The thirty-five
days I spent in America
were very sad and bitter days to me. There
I saw the sheep wandering through all the mountains and upon every high hill - yea, they are scattered
upon all the face of the earth and none did search or seek after them. Oh Jesus my Saviour and King! where are Thy messengers? Where are Thy preachers? Command them to come and save the lost ones in
America.”
Yet it is certain that rapid and sure is
the call of Israel’s
remnant according to the election of grace. For 115 missionary societies
labour among the Jews of the world, with some 700 missionaries, or one to every
20,000 Jews. Some 204,540 Jews
were baptized in the nineteenth century. There is one Protestant Hebrew convert to
every 156 Jews, while there is but one from every 525 Gentiles: that is, if
Gentiles had yielded to Christ as Jews did in the nineteenth century, Gentile
converts would have been seven millions instead of two. Hebrew
converts who enter the Christian ministry are three times more numerous than
the Gentile. And it is a most
encouraging fact to Gentile workers amongst the Jews that, in an average
meeting of Jewish converts, it will be found that from
fifty to seventy-five per cent. were won through
Gentiles. No mission field in the world
has been so successful as the Jewish, and a larger
proportion of converts (it is said) has come from England than from any other country
of the globe.
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