222

A Call to Prayer for Israel.

FOR A REVIVAL OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM.

God has given the Church in America a marvellous opportunity. In 1840 there were but 15,000 Jews in the United States-now they number almost 1,200,000. They have multiplied nearly eighty-fold in two short generations. The increase since 1880 has been over 900,000. More than 60,000 Jews landed here in 1900. God has brought them to our doors. They have been transferred from the midst of a dead ecclesiasticism into contact with the most vital form of Christianity. Truly some great purpose lies in this fact.

A growing infidelity accentuates the crisis. Reformed Judaism is but another name for unbelief in the Word of God. The rabbis of reform, polished and cultured, are spreading all over our land the baleful teachings of modern rationalism. Thousands of young men, breaking away from the old trammels, are following the lead of these false teachers. Infidel works form the staple reading for many of these bright minds.

Apparent failure in Jewish mission work in our land marks the acuteness of the crisis. One after another of the great denominations has given up Gospel work among the Jews. They seem unable to conduct such missions with success. But it may be the failure lies with the Church rather than with the field.

The utter inadequacy of present efforts. It is clearly apparent that the Church of Christ in America has not carefully considered the cause of Jewish missions. She has never searched out the solution of the problems connected with this work. Hence, not understanding the needs, the Church has never been ready to meet the demands. After eighty years of spasmodic effort there exists in America today no properly equipped mission to the Jews. Trained workers are sadly lacking. Not half a dozen ordained men are at work in the whole field. There is no school where workers can receive the special preparation so much required. Facilities for the proper care of converts do not exist at all. The present crisis demands more prayer, more faith, more earnest thought and diligent effort. A readjustment of the entire Jewish missionary enterprise is the crying need of the hour.-From "A Call to Prayer for Israel."

The Missionary Herald adds the following reminiscence: a reminiscence of very few Christians now living:

A half century ago, and less, it was very common to hear in public prayer a petition for "God's covenant people." That most suitable petition is seldom heard in these days. The present time is peculiarly favorable for reaching the Jews in many parts of the world, and it is also a time of special peril in view of the trend toward scepticism on the part of those Jews who have lost faith in their ancient Scriptures. Surely Christians of every name and in all lands should not forget to plead for the hastening of the time "when all Israel shall be saved."

Readiness of Eastern Jews for the Gospel. 223

JEWS IN PERSIA.

Since we reprinted travelling observations of Rev. Robert E. Speer, which showed remarkably interesting conditions of mind among the Jews (perhaps incident to Mohammedan rather than nominally Christian environment) repeated incidents of like import have been copied here from The Friend of Israel, which were given by British missionaries and travellers in Persia and Eastern Turkey. We extract a few lines from a letter by C. H. Stilleman, dated Kirman, Persia, Dec. 19, 1901.

When I was in Kirman three years ago I saw something of the Jewish Rabbis, and gave them copies of the Hebrew New Testament. The day after I now reached Kirman, one of the Rabbis, named Solomon, met and recognized my servant, and asked him whether I had come back again, for he very much wanted to see me. He came up to the Persian service on the Sunday morning, and has been present each of the three Sundays that I have been here, besides coming constantly for private conversation.

He had been so much prejudiced against Christian books that he at first thought it would be a deadly sin to read the Hebrew New Testament which I had given him. But he could find no rest for his soul, and at last thought he would open the book and see if its teaching was really very bad. He was astonished to find that our Lord said He had not come to destroy but to fulfil; and he was greatly impressed with the record of His life and work, and compassion and love. Gradually, as he read further, he became fully convinced that the Lord Jesus was the true Messiah, and he told me that when he came to the account of His sufferings and death, his heart was almost broken and he could not restrain his tears. Since then he has been earnestly studying the Scriptures, the true Light has been shining more and more brightly in his heart, and he has quite decided to be baptized and to follow Christ, cost what it may. The other night he was questioned as to his visits and conversations with me, and was asked whether he intended to forsake his own religion. They threatened to stone him, and he is almost sure to be turned out of his father's house with his wife and three children, but he seems quite prepared to face persecution for Christ's sake. He has given up soothsaying, which he had found a profitable occupation, but now admits it is nothing but falsehood. He is also giving up selling wine to Mohammedans, and is thus resigning two of the chief sources of his income. Solomon is the son of the Chief Rabbi, and is himself the third Rabbi in Kirman. He will, I believe, be a very true witness for Christ among the Jews of this place,

224

Bible Study among English Jews.

A BIBLE SCHOOL FOR JEWS IN LONDON.

In the commodious premises of the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, at 189 Whitechapel Road, I was witness on February 13th of a scene which deeply impressed me. This mission method is pursued, I understand, daily from 4 to 8 P.M., excepting on Saturday and Sunday (i. e., on the Jewish Sabbath Day and on our Lord's Day), when services of a different character are held.

On the day of my visit, in the large upper room, sixty Jews were assembled, men from various lands and of various types of countenance; some with fair hair, but mostly dark-haired; some with features markedly Jewish, others hardly distinguishable from Gentiles; but all of them of the seed of Jacob. The attendance rises sometimes to seventy, eighty, ninety, and even a hundred. During three hours, from 4 to 7 o'clock, questions are put by the audience. During the time I was present there was no pause; man after man, Bible in hand, rose and put his question. Every man had a Bible before him. The answer was given distinctly and emphatically by Mr. Schonberger, who in turn with Mr. Baron and two other able colleagues, shares in this special form of service, and gives immediate replies to eager questioners.

At 7 o'clock, in the large hall on the ground floor, a Bible-reading goes on for an hour. Again a goodly company, Bible in hand, listened to Mr. Baron's exposition of John vii:37-39, men rising now and again to read some verse related to the subject, which Mr. Baron quoted during his unfolding of the passage.

In both of the meetings there appeared unflagging interest on the part of the audience, no apathy and no lack of intelligence; indeed, it would be difficult to find in a working-men's Bible-class composed of Gentiles, a group of learners of equally keen intellect. What a rare thing, even in such a world-centre as London, to secure the attendance and the attention of (say) sixty working-men to gather round the Word of God, with interest kept alive all the while!

In the meetings I have described the men put their questions chiefly in the Yiddish dialect; but the teachers speak in German. The Jews would value the missionaries less if they spoke or read to them in their jargon; they would not esteem them to be educated men fit to teach. The most perfect order prevailed. The men evidently value the time and the pains bestowed upon them. The work is on the beautiful apostolic line adopted by Paul, who "reasoned out of the Scriptures that this Jesus is the Christ" (Acts xvii:2, 3). It convinces the mind, and then the heart is touched by the teacher "opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead" (Acts xvii :3). There are blessed methods not a few by which the Jews may be reached and won for Christ; but perhaps we may claim the foregoing to be the greatest.-Friend of Israel.

"Given Over to a Mind of Dross.'

INTELLECTUAL DEGENERACY OF THE AGE.

PANTHEISM RUN MAD.

225

The chief prophetic signs of the latter day are apostasies; false Christs; deceivers and deceived waxing worse and worse; organized anarchistic legions tormenting Antichrist society for a hundred and fifty years; prevalence of suicide; etc. To which of the prophecies, however, shall we refer the astonishing intellectual condition of the present age? We are well acquainted with Satan's power to debauch the morals of all classes, or to set up false philosophies and theologies and ways of salvation that appeal shrewdly to the intellect of the studious or the native instincts of the simple. But we are quite taken aback by the more novel developments of the great adversary's craft in debauching at large the human understanding itself. Great learning and consummate dialectic ability prove not only useless to discern the grossest contradictions of fact and logic in current criticism of the Bible; they are the very source and sustenance, inexhaustible and immedicable, of absurdities discreditable to the intellect of a child, yet engaging the profound respect of a gaping world without distinction of age, sex, rank, or even opinion.

This, however, is by no means the strangest intellectual phenomenon that constrains us to amazement as we survey the backward evolution of the age. It is infinitely outdone by the retrogression of human intelligence to stark idiocy in the disguise of 'science' and in the name of Christ. The lunatic had hitherto been distinguishable as one incorrigibly convinced that the thing that it is is not, and the thing that is not is, and by an incorrigible determination to act upon such conviction, regardless of consequences. That distinction, so convenient for the researches of alienists and the restraint of dangerous hallucinations, has been lost in a dispersion of Bedlam that covers the earth and confounds the language of large communities, of average or more than average intelligence. There remains no general distinctive test by which a lunatic can be acquitted of crime or placed under restraint and medication, the application of which would not sweep a large proportion of well-to-do and apparently well educated men and women in America and Europe into lunatic asylums, or leave them at large to commit, as they often do, inhuman atrocities, with impunity as irresponsibles.

The amazing extent to which the human intellect is already

226

Intellectual Degeneracy 'of the Age.

confounded by the rhapsodies of Mrs. Eddy, and the rapidity with which the confusion is spreading everywhere, has lately been set forth in a magazine article summarized in the New York Sun. From this we learn statistically what our eyes and ears have been filled with since the inauspicious dawn of the Twentieth Century, of the leaps and bounds by which the composite negation of Christ and science is going through the human mind in Protestant Christendom. From the publication of an obscure volume of ultra pantheistic and unintelligible speculations or fancies, called "Science and Health, with a Key of the Scriptures," in 1875, and the gathering of a few disciples in Boston, in 1879, the thing grew silently until perhaps five years ago, when it suddenly struck the country like an epidemic, which seems to rage especially among people who are supposed to take their reading and thinking rather seriously. The number of societies blasphemously called 'Churches of Christ (scientist)' which have sprung into existence and large membership in all principal cities, within this short period, has reached a total of 663; their 'churches' are marvels of costliness and imposing size, ranging in many cases from a quarter to a half and even three quarters of a million dollars in cost; their 'readers,' whose office is to minister the inane verbosities of Mrs. Eddy to wondering thousands, are liberally supported; their 'healers,' male and female, are multiplying in lucrative practice; and the foundress of the cult is reported fabulously rich and idolatrously venerated. The 'Mother Church' in Boston shows an enrolment of 22,127 and a last year's addition of 3,029 members. In all the principal cities of the United States, 'churches' of the largest class have been built, filled, and supported, and are still going up from day to day. In England, Christian Science' is described as making much headway, with organized churches or so-called branches at London, Manchester, Cambridge and Edinburgh. These congregations, we are told, are there, as here, largely recruited from the professional ranks-judges, lawyers, doctors. A distinguished English disciple is Lord Dunmore, and the leader of the Cambridge branch is Mrs. Butler, wife of the Master of Trinity. On the continent there is a 'church' at Berlin.

The creed of this great and growing 'denomination' is tersely stated in such words as these which we have descriptively headed

PANTHEISM RUN MAD:

"God is good, and God is all: consequently there is and can be no such thing as evil, physical or spiritual; it is merely a misunderstanding of ours, an erring human sense of things. There