clothed in flowery and figurative phrases their advocacy of the most shameless scepticism, the lowest morality.

What, save utter despair, could result from such a state of being? When sensual indulgence has reached the point of exhaustion and satiety, a higher yearning makes itself felt; the more keenly and bitterly, the smaller the power left in the burnt-out embers of the soul, to satisfy her own aspirations after light and life. Doubt fills the spirit with deepest sadness, with bitterest anguish at the sense of its own nothingness. Then the slave desires enlargement. If earthly freedom be denied him, he stretches forth his hand to Heaven, and seeks an imagined spiritual liberty on High. Even the most shameless parasite despises him before whom he bends, gnashing his teeth and muttering to himself, 'Had I but your possessions, thus should you render obeisance unto me.' For all these longings, all these aspirations, antiquity could offer nought, no-nought; could yield no satisfaction. For under the dominion of Rome, and the degeneracy of the other nations, Art even she that had been the peculiar creation and attribute of antiquity, had wholly declined.

One only nation still existed, in whom there yet lay a vigorous germ, a strong element of life and beingthe Jews, with the Religious Idea. This idea passed from Judaism into Christianity; and, arrayed in this garb, entered the general world of man. She thus received the worn-out old world in her maternal embrace, mitigated the death-struggle for antiquity; and though doubtless no longer wearing her previous aspect, arose with the fresh morning dawn, in the midst of the new races of the earth.

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LECTURE VII.

THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO JUDAISM.

It is not without some hesitation that I have undertaken to investigate the subject of which it is this day my duty to treat, viz., the relation of Christianity to Judaism. By every earnest thinker, the passing judgment on that held by the professors of creeds different from his own to be the holiest and the highest, must ever be a matter involving seriousness and deliberation, amounting almost to reluctance. That Christianity cannot be viewed by a Jew in the light in which it is viewed by a Christian, is self-evident. That he should so view it will not, I am sure, be expected; since if he could, he would not be a Jew. To omit this branch of our enquiry is impossible. The method we have adopted in tracing the course of development taken by the religious idea, renders it indispensable that its entrance into the wide arena of the world of man under the form of Christianity should be clearly elucidated; or this very matter,-the development of the religious idea, would be but imperfectly understood.

Every candid seeker after the truth within the range of our present enquiry, cannot abstain, if a Jew, from closely examining into Christianity; and cannot fail, if a Christian, to desire acquaintance with the estimate

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formed of the Christian system by the Jewish mind according to the Jewish standard. While therefore strictly adhering to the plan hitherto pursued in these Lectures, and examining Christianity according to the premises I have laid down, I can rest in the confident assurance that my respected hearers must have already become convinced of the earnest desire by which I have been actuated, to judge impartially, and according to the historical and objective standard only. The enlightened members of all religious denominations have assuredly in this era gone so far as to have attained to the conviction, that by free and general enquiry only can a knowledge of truth be acquired; and that to suppress utterances and enforce silence, in order to uphold any system, can have but the effect of precipitating its ruin.

Much however depends on the mode in which judgment is pronounced. Whenever opinions are formed in a spirit of animosity, malignity, exclusion, and depreciation, they should be received with distrust, or rejected with firmness. Such defects are in themselves evidences of immature judgment; for truth, invested with her highest attributes, cannot hate and condemn, she can but correct and instruct. Christianity could never be hated by a true Jew, who knows it to be a great off-shoot of his own stem.

You must now permit me in the first place cursorily to review the ground already traversed; to re-examine the foundations already laid, on which the superstructure is to be reared. It has been seen, that ever since the promulgation of Mosaism up to the period at which we have arrived, the religious idea and the human idea had been continuously and mutually antagonistic. The

human idea, starting from the ego, or principle of self, had thence proceeded to nature and her operations, in order to ascertain their action on man. Thus a dualistic principle was soon declared to prevail in her, by the human idea;-existence and non-existence,-growth and decay. Then a third and modifying power was sought, and the conception formed of the Godhead was that of powers held by three or more divinities. Such are the Sanzai of the Chinese; the Brama, Vischnu, and Siwen of the Indians; the Ormuzd, Ahriman, and ZeruaneAkrene of the Persians. Finally, the human idea came itself to detect the utter nothingness of these conceptions, and thus prepared its own dissolution. Such was the process all antiquity passed through, from the Indians down to the Romans.

In the opposite principle, the religious idea as set forth in Mosaism predicates a God before known by revelation. This God is an absolute existence, a holy, perfect, eternal and supermundane being, the Creator of the world, as the unity of all specialities. This one and only God formed man, as the chief of those specialities, to be a unity composed of body and spirit, endowed with a soul created in the image of God. God sustains the universe; indirectly, by means of the great laws of nature, on which He has set it forth; directly, in His relation to the God-like human spirit, as man's Providence, Judge, Pardoner, and Revealer. The highest principle of morals is declared by Mosaism to be, 'Man shall be holy, as the Lord his God is holy.' This holiness is to be manifested in love to God, love to his neighbour, and in the control exercised by man's moral consciousness over his physical and temporal desires. Mosaism makes imperative on man the

practice of justice and charity, and renders the claim to the latter the inalienable right of the poor. Human society was established by Mosaism on the basis of personal freedom, equality of right, and all possible equality of possession. The unity of the life and of the idea was set forth by Mosaism, which determined the conditions of a life imbued with the religious idea, of a truly religious' here' below, complete and entire. Yet that in the Jewish people, as in all peoples, the human and natural should become active, was inevitable. Prophetism was therefore compelled by stern reality, to sever the life from the Idea, in order, from out the midst of the heathen life of the Jewish race, to conduct the Idea to safety and victory. By this severance, Prophetism further prepared the religious idea for its destined dissemination throughout mankind. After the religious idea had overcome the heathenism within the Jewish race, it was necessary, in order to its obtaining a like victory over the heathenism prevailing among mankind generally, that it should introduce itself into that general world of man. This introduction could be effected only according to the measure and degree of free development attained by the human race. Though antiquity had been prepared by its previous process of dissolution, for the acceptance of the religious idea, since its vitality was wholly exhausted, yet that acceptance could be but partial. For the development of man's being was yet too imperfect, to fit him to be the recipient of the religious idea, whole, pure, and entire. Christianity is virtually the entrance of this semi-religious idea into the Western, as Moslemism is its introduction into the Eastern, world. To make good this assertion is our present task.