H. C. Adams

“ Jerusalem has been long trodden down of the Gentiles; the times of the Gentiles are nearly fulfilled. What is to follow? Are the Jews to be restored, as a distinct people, to the Land of Promise, and there accept Him whom their fathers rejected as their King? There is no subject on which speculation is more busy, or on which more confident judgments are pronounced. But it is the voice of man that speaks, not of God. One thing alone is sure. God has not cast away His people. ”

“ Such of the New Christians as had escaped the murderous hands of the mob again passed under the protection of the law. Yet they could not but have felt like men dwelling near the crater of some volcanic mountain, which might at any moment burst forth in torrents of burning lava, and overwhelm them utterly; and it is worthy of notice that, although the rioters were sternly punished for their lawless violence, no reparation was made to the Jews—not even an expression of regret was uttered for the unprovoked and cruel wrongs they had undergone. ”

“ Rationalists might declare the Incarnate God to have been a personified myth, an ideal Being, in whose reputed words and acts Christian ideology found embodiment. But there were His words, which no man could have spoken; and there were His acts, which no man could have performed; there were His predictions, which the history of the world since His day had made good, and which nothing but Divine Wisdom could have uttered. The Jews had nothing of this to sustain them, and it cannot surprise us that many among them found no shelter in such a sea of doubt, except in embracing the Christian creed. ”

“ Let us consider what the guilt of the Jews, who slew the Lord, really amounted to. They do not, I believe, themselves deny that they are suffering under Divine displeasure, or that that displeasure has been occasioned by their sin. On the contrary, they hold that it is their sin that has delayed, and still delays, the coming of the Messiah. But, far from thinking that sin to have been the murder of Jesus Christ, they do not consider that their fathers were guilty in that matter at all. Their law, so they contend, requires them to put to death blasphemers and setters up of strange gods. ”

“ Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?
What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile, but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse. [149] As it has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves. Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not the very noblest—that the world has seen. ”

“ The childhood of the Jewish nation was a hard and harsh one. They grew up into national existence under alien rulers, who feared and hated them, imposed on them intolerable burdens, and would have destroyed them from off the face of the earth, but for the Divine protection extended over them. Delivered by the same visible display of Divine power from these tyrants, they were transported to a rich and genial land, powerful and warlike nations being ejected to make way for them. Their first national, and true, idea must needs have been their special privileges as the favoured people of Heaven ”

“ Why was the possession of the Holy City by them a greater outrage on the feelings of Christian men in one generation than in another? Or are we to suppose that men were more zealous for God’s honour in the eleventh than they had been in the seventh century? No, not so. The causes which provoked the Crusades were different from these, and they are of importance to us, because they throw a light on the feeling which simultaneously arose against the Jews also. ”

“ THE JEWS IN SPAIN. Turning now to Spain, we find that the Jews, during this century, still continued to enjoy, if not the full measure of justice to which they were entitled, yet nevertheless an amount of it which contrasts favourably with the treatment they underwent in other lands. The wisdom, justice, and clemency also shown by the Spanish kings on many occasions are so unlike the spirit manifested in after generations, that we can hardly believe that we are writing of the same Spain which approved the barbarities of Torquemada, or the horrors of the Jewish exodus. ”

“ They might rightly, in such men’s eyes, be the subjects of entreaty, warning, perhaps punishment, but never of hate or contempt. But they who were thus raised above the convictions of their age were very few. And there were others—men of the highest character, whose devotion to God’s service and love for their fellow-men cannot be questioned—men like Louis IX. of France, Peter of Clugny, Savonarola, Martin Luther, Cardinal Borromeo—who regarded the Jews with horror and detestation, as persons beyond the pale of charity, who were simply to be crushed and trampled out. ”

“ There is, first of all, the belief that the Jews are a people lying under the curse of God, and that to show any favour to them is to rebel against this decree. We have seen what revolting barbarities this idea led to during the Dark and Middle Ages. Its nineteenth-century form—of standing aloof, and withholding civil rights from them—is less shocking in its results, but equally false in principle. God has doubtless His own purposes towards them, and they are a standing miracle, an enduring evidence of the truth of His prophetic word. ”

“ Shut out from every nobler pursuit, forbidden the career of the statesman, the soldier, the artist, the author, or the physician, except within the narrow bounds of their own despised race—they were driven to the one sordid trade of money-getting, and compelled even in that to practise the extremity of exaction and rigour, or else—subject as they were to continual lawless plunder—they could not have lived. ”

“ In the day when account will be required of all, may it not be found that the deadliest of their own sins was, that by their hideous travesty of the Christian faith they shut out from the Jew the knowledge of the reality?
For centuries the bitterest persecutions came from those who, while robbing and ill-treating the Jews, because they charged them with heaping ridicule upon Christianity and eagerly aiding its enemies, were themselves ignorant of the first principles of the Gospel, and devoted adherents of the Church of those times. ”

“ Almost coincidently with this shocking deed, one of equal horror was perpetrated at Cæsarea, where 20,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Greek inhabitants. In this atmosphere of treachery and bloodshed the whole nation appears to have gone mad. They were resolved, apparently, that as every man’s hand was against them, so should their hand be against every man. They took up arms, plundered several of the Syrian cities, laying waste the whole country round them. The Syrians retaliated with equal barbarity, everywhere slaying without mercy their Jewish fellow-citizens. ”

“ Eighteen centuries have, in all other instances, effected so vast a change in the condition of a nation, that it is difficult to trace any identity between its earlier and its later generations. Eighteen centuries ago our own ancestors were savage tribes, living in wattled huts, staining their naked bodies with woad, and practising barbarous and bloody rites. In language, in religion, in mental and moral culture, in social organization, they were so wholly different from ourselves that it is difficult to discover any point of resemblance between the two. ”

“ Which among all the countless nations, overthrown by the military genius of Rome, ever resisted so long, or with such fatal effect, her illimitable power, as the defenders of Jerusalem? But, no doubt, centuries of oppression had their effect in deteriorating the nobler, and developing the meaner, features of the Jewish character, until the Jews became at last almost—though not quite—what their persecutors believed them to be. ”

“ The haute noblesse were jealous of the court favour which the Jews had so long enjoyed, and were seeking for an opportunity to oust them from it; the lesser nobles were deeply in their debt, and looked to a popular outbreak as the readiest mode of ridding themselves of their encumbrances; the priesthood were, as a rule, though with some noble exceptions, their bitter enemies, continually denouncing them to the people, as the causes of every national misfortune that befell them. ”

“ This epoch is remarkable for a demonstration of intolerant bigotry—not, as heretofore, evinced by the Christians against the Jews, but by the Jews against some of their own brethren. One would certainly have thought that they had had such convincing proof of the folly, to use no harsher term, of endeavouring to compel men by the infliction of disgrace and suffering to adopt or renounce a religious belief, that they would have abstained from such a course themselves. ”

“ But in the tenth century, when the idea was widely entertained throughout Western Europe that the world was on the very point of coming to an end, and further, that all who died in the Holy Land would certainly be saved, the number of those who travelled thither was greatly multiplied. Those who returned brought back with them tales of outrage and unprovoked insult, which everywhere roused indignation. Jerusalem had passed into the hands of the Turks, a fierce and uncultured race, who had adopted Islamism in its most fanatic spirit. ”

“ Whatever great qualities humanity may possess, it is by men of this race that they have been exhibited in their highest development. If we ask from what nation has arisen the ablest legislator, the most far-seeing statesman, the wisest philosopher, the most chivalrous warrior, the greatest monarch, the most Heaven-inspired poet, we must answer, in every instance, From the nation of the Jews. ”

“ He holds language which an apostle might endorse. ‘Justice and charity,’ he writes, ‘are the one infallible sign of the catholic faith, the genuine fruits of the Holy Spirit. Where they are found, there is Christ. Where they are wanting, Christ is not. For by the Spirit of Christ are we led to justice and charity.’ We are led—so, too, the Scriptures teach—led, if we will follow; not blindly driven, as the fatalist must believe.
On the whole, a wise man will hardly speak otherwise than with respect and tenderness of Spinoza. ”

“ The inquiry, in fact, revealed a mass of ignorance, prejudice, and uncharity which would have been bad enough in the twelfth century, but which in the nineteenth is almost incredible. The lower classes, indeed, are, in most European countries, still steeped in ignorance. But what are we to think of men of education—mayors, commissioners of police, lawyers holding high offices—who could believe that the Jews made use of Christian blood in the performance of their religious rites? ”

“ Nothing, indeed, is more probable than that the Jews should have migrated towards the East, when Chosroes let loose against them the merciless wrath of an Eastern despot. To the West lay the Roman empire, where harsh laws against their nation were in force: to the South the new Arabian impostor was persecuting their countrymen: to the North all was barren and ungenial. But to the East were rich and pleasant regions, where, though they might encounter hostility from neighbouring tribes, they were strong enough to maintain themselves in peace and security. ”

“ The next day he sent for the grandees of the court, and among them the archbishop, and inquired of him, ‘How many kings have you known in Spain?’ The archbishop answered, ‘Three—your grandfather, your father, and yourself.’ ‘Nay,’ rejoined Henry; ‘young as I am, I can remember at least twenty, though there ought to have been only one. But it is time that I put my rivals down, and reign alone.’ At the same moment a band of soldiers, accompanied by an executioner, and carrying ropes and gibbets, entered the apartment. The grandees threw themselves at his feet, and entreated his mercy. ”

“ It is probable that the emperor did not understand—indeed, no heathen could understand—the horror and despair which the publication of the design caused among the unhappy Jews. It was in their eyes the most fearful impiety—the most horrible profanation. Their only hope lay in the advent of the long-promised Messiah; who now surely, if ever, might be expected to appear on earth, and redeem His people from the depth of degradation and misery to which they had sunk. ”

“ Great God of Mercy, that men should dare to bring such deeds into Thy very house, for Thine approval! She cried out that six of her seven children had already been taken from her—would he not spare her youngest to her? ”