sm. The Jewish people stand in the same relation
to Judaism as the _body_ to the _soul_. The national or racial body of
Judaism consists of the remnant of the tribe of Judah which succeeded in
establishing a new commonwealth in Judaea in place of the ancient
Israelitish kingdom, and which survived the downfall of state and temple
to continue its existence as a separate people during a dispersion over
the globe for thousands of years, forming ever a cosmopolitan element
among all the nations in whose lands it dwelt. Judaism, on the other hand,
is the religious system itself, the vital element which united the Jewish
people, preserving it and regenerating it ever anew. It is the spirit
which endowed the handful of Jews with a power of resistance and a fervor
of faith unparalleled in history, enabling them to persevere in the mighty
contest with heathenism and Christianity. It made of them a nation of
martyrs and thinkers, suffering and struggling for the cause of truth and
justice, yet forming, consciously or unconsciously, a potent factor in all
the great intellectual movements which are ultimately to win the entire
gentile world for the purest and loftiest truths concerning God and man.

2. Judaism, accordingly, does not denote the Jewish nationality, with its
political and cultural achievements and aspirations, as those who have
lost faith in the religious mission of Israel would have it. On the other
hand, it is not a nomistic or legalistic religion confined to the Jewish
people, as is maintained by Christian writers, who, lacking a full
appreciation of its lofty world-wide purpose and its cosmopolitan and
humanitarian character, claim that it has surrendered its universal
prophetic truths to Christianity. Nor should it be presented as a religion
of pure _Theism_, aiming to unite all believers in one God into a Church
Universal, of which certain visionaries dream. Judaism is nothing less
than a message concerning the _One and holy God_ and _one, undivided
humanity_ with a world-uniting _Messianic goal_, a message intrusted by
divine revelation to the Jewish people. Thus Israel is its prophetic
harbinger and priestly guardian, its witness and defender throughout the
ages, who is never to falter in the task of upholding and unfolding its
truths until they have become the possession of the whole human race.

3. Owing to this twofold nature of a universal religious truth and at the
same time a mission intrusted to a specia