Our Israelitish Brethren

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That was a happy touch of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher's, the other week, in his newspaper, The Christian Union, where, after having given the news of the various Christian denominations, he concluded by a few paragraphs, headed thus—

"OTHER RELIGIONS."

Whether we regard this as a mere stroke of journalism, or as a recognition of the claims of other religions to the regard and respect of Christians, it was worthy of the intelligence of the editor. Nothing is more startling to a student of religions than their likeness to one another, and the similarity of their effects upon the various minds. Men who have lived in the Eastern world, in Japan, Siam, India, China, and in the great islands of the Archipelago, have often remarked that the religions of those lands, however they may differ in name, usages, rites, costumes, traditions, have much more in common than they have of difference; and under them all can be found the same varieties of religious and irreligious character: the sincere and lowly worshipper; the man who expects to be heard for his much speaking; he who affects devotion, and lie who affects indifference; the rogue who uses religion as a cloak, and the politician who employs it as capital; the dealer in religious merchandise, who believes in religion as the servants of the Cataract House believe in the sublimity of Niagara;—all these characters, we are assured, can be found under all the religions of the Oriental world.

And, what is more interesting, it seems as if the religions of the world were in the same state of transition, and at about the same stage of progress. They are all anxious, all excited, all in movement. Orthodox, heterodox, ritualists, infidels,—we find them at Calcutta, in Japan, in China, in Barbary, as we do at London, Berlin, Paris, New York, and Boston. English residents in India tell us that in the higher society of Calcutta there are native young men who take precisely the same tone with regard to the Brahmins and the Hindoo sacred books so many of our young pagans do at Pads, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Boston, when the Christian religion is the subject of discourse,—a tone not of contempt, by any means; they are beyond and above that. They speak of the religion of their fathers as the son of an ancient house might descant upon the old family coach, which was excellent in its day, but is now done with, and kept as an interesting relic. Nor are there wanting, in those remoter capitals of the world, young men who surprise their companions, as some of our young ritualists do, by a sedulous imitation or revival of ancient methods and forgotten rites.

Mr. Beecher may well tell us, then, of "Other Religions"; for they are all in a similar critical condition. To the careless looker-on it seems as if they were all dissolving; but, in reality, they are only shedding their non-essentials, which is a painful and demoralizing process. When in the Arctic seas the sun gains power to soften the ice and melt the snows, the first effects upon the ice-bound fleets of fishermen and navigators are disagreeable, if not injurious. Everything is soft, damp, unstable; the snug snow-packing, which had protected and warmed the imprisoned mariners so long, becomes a source of discomfort; and the ice-roads which had borne them stiffly up are safe no longer. But the thaw is about so act them FREE, and send them careering over the boundless deep.

Our Israelitish brethren, besides sharing in the influences which are mitigating all creeds and liberalizing all minds, are now subjected to a trial peculiar to themselves. From being persecuted everywhere, they are beginning to be honored and sought. The grand example of the youngest of the nations in protecting all religions equally, while recognizing none, has had its effect in improving the condition of the Jews throughout the greater part of Christendom and beyond Christendom. Within the recollection of men still young, Jews have been admitted to the British Parliament, where, I am informed by a distinguished Rabbi, who gloried in the fact, no Jew has ever sided with the party of reaction, except one, and he a renegade. The Jews to-day in the House of Commons vote on important measures with John Bright. The professor of Hebrew in the London University is a Hebrew; and among the Jewish students last year at Oxford and Cambridge, one was a senior wrangler and another the crack oarsman of his college. In London one of the noted clubs is Jewish, and there are so many Jews in the city government that they may almost be said to have the controlling influence. Happily, the Jews are not proselyters, and can be aldermen without using their office to get a sly advantage for their synagogue. Among the seventy-five thousand Jews in London, there are many business men who, despite the double Sunday, hold their own against Christian competitors, to say nothing of the much greater number who have no Sunday at all. There is one Jewish clothing-house in London that has thirteen stores and employs eleven thousand people.

In France the Jews are fortunate in the free Sunday permitted both by law and custom; and as a consequence there is less poverty among them than elsewhere. The Rabbis are paid from the public treasury, as the ministers of the various Christian denominations are and the government courts their good will. The Jewish newspaper in Paris describes in glowing words the manner in which "the Emperor's fete” was celebrated at the principal synagogue. A detachment of chasseurs, commanded by an officer, was stationed in the temple opposite the choir, and while the "Halel" was chanted the edifice resounded with the blast of trumpets from a military band. At the moment when the scroll of the Law was taken out of its sacred enclosure the troops presented arms, the trumpets sounded, and the organ pealed its melodious thunder. Thus the host is saluted on festive days at Notre Dame. In Paris, among a large number of other charitable organizations of Israelites, I find two designed to aid parents who desire to apprentice their children to trades. These are societies for paying the premiums required in Europe when apprentices are taken.

Throughout Germany Jews at length stand upon an equality before the law with Christians,—even in Austria, so long the citadel of conservatism. Austria has abolished all Sunday laws that would prevent Jews from cultivating land, and the Emperor has sought to compliment his Israelitish subjects by appointing two young Hebrew gentlemen to positions on his personal staff. This in Austria, where until 1860 a Jew could not exercise many of the most usual avocations,—could not be a farmer, miller, apothecary, brewer; and in some wide regions and populous places of the empire could not reside at all! In Frankfort, where the Rothschilds originated, the Jews are masters of everything. Those great bankers, as all the world knows, live in luxury more than regal; but all the world does not know that several members of this family are persons of genuine liberality of mind as well as bountifully liberal in charitable gifts. It is a pity the bead of so conspicuous a house should not set a better example to Christians, by living more simply. But all things in their time. When the time comes for general reaction against the burdensome and immoral splendors of modern life,—such as are described in Lothair,—the Jews will not be the last to adopt a style of elegant and rational simplicity.

Spain, wonderful to relate, joins the nations in restoring to the Jews the rights of man, of which she despoiled them four centuries ago. The Israelites of the world are now joining in a dollar subscription to build in Madrid a temple, worthy by its magnitude and splendor to commemorate the abrogation of the edict of 1492, which silenced Hebrew worship throughout Spain, and dismantled every synagogue. Within these few weeks Sweden has swept from her law books every remaining statute which made a distinction between Jews and Christians and now, except in Russia and the Papal States, there is, I believe, no part of Europe where an Israelite has not the essential rights of a citizen, so far as they are enjoyed by the rest of the people.

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