is is the main teaching of Scripture and the hope
voiced in the liturgy; while Israel's mission to defend, to unfold and to
propagate this truth is a corollary of the doctrine itself and cannot be
separated from it. Whether we regard it as Law or a system of doctrine, as
religious truth or world-mission, this belief pledged the little tribe of
Judah to a warfare of many thousands of years against the hordes of
heathendom with all their idolatry and brutality, their deification of man
and their degradation of deity to human rank. It betokened a battle for
the pure idea of God and man, which is not to end until the principle of
divine holiness has done away with every form of life that tends to
degrade and to disunite mankind, and until Israel's Only One has become
the unifying power and the highest ideal of all humanity.

2. Of this great world-duty of Israel only the few will ever become fully
conscious. As in the days of the prophets, so in later periods, only a
"small remnant" was fully imbued with the lofty ideal. In times of
oppression the great multitude of the people persisted in a conscientious
observance of the Law and underwent suffering without a murmur. Yet in
times of liberty and enlightenment this same majority often neglects to
assimilate the new culture to its own superior spirit, but instead eagerly
assimilates itself to the surrounding world, and thereby loses much of its
intrinsic strength and self-respect. The pendulum of thought and sentiment
swings to and fro between the national and the universal ideals, while
only a few maturer minds have a clear vision of the goal as it is to be
reached along both lines of development. Nevertheless, Judaism is in a
true sense a religion of the people. It is free from all priestly tutelage
and hierarchical interference. It has no ecclesiastical system of belief,
guarded and supervised by men invested with superior powers. Its teachers
and leaders have always been men from among the people, like the prophets
of yore, with no sacerdotal privilege or title; in fact, in his own
household each father is the God-appointed teacher of his children.(20)

3. Neither is Judaism the creation of a single person, either prophet or a
man with divine claims. It points back to the patriarchs as its first
source of revelation. It speaks not of the God of Moses, of Amos and
Isaiah, but of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby declaring the
Jewish genius to be the creator of i