enies most emphatically the right of Christianity or any other
religion to arrogate to itself the title of "the absolute religion" or to
claim to be "the finest blossom and the ripest fruit of religious
development." As if any mortal man at any time or under any condition
could say without presumption: "I am the Truth" or "No one cometh unto the
Father but by me."(22) "When man was to proceed from the hands of his
Maker," says the Midrash, "the Holy One, Blessed be His name, cast truth
down to the earth, saying, 'Let truth spring forth from the earth, and
righteousness look down from heaven.' "(23) The full unfolding of the
religious and moral life of mankind is the work of countless generations
yet to come, and many divine heralds of truth and righteousness have yet
to contribute their share. In this work of untold ages, Judaism claims
that it has achieved and is still achieving its full part as the prophetic
world-religion. Its law of righteousness, which takes for its scope the
whole of human life, in its political and social relations as well as its
personal aspects, forms the foundation of its ethics for all time; while
its hope for a future realization of the Kingdom of God has actually
become the aim of human history. As a matter of fact, when the true object
of religion is the hallowing of life rather than the salvation of the
soul, there is little room left for sectarian exclusiveness, or for a
heaven for believers and a hell for unbelievers. With this broad outlook
upon life, Judaism lays claim, not to perfection, but to perfectibility;
it has supreme capacity for growing toward the highest ideals of mankind,
as beheld by the prophets in their Messianic visions.

Chapter IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith

1. In order to reach a clear opinion, whether or not Judaism has articles
of faith in the sense of Church dogmas, a question so much discussed since
the days of Moses Mendelssohn, it seems necessary first to ascertain what
faith in general means to the Jew.(24) Now the word used in Jewish
literature for faith is _Emunah_, from the root _Aman_, to be firm; this
denotes firm reliance upon God, and likewise firm adherence to him, hence
both _faith_ and _faithfulness_. Both Scripture and the Rabbis demanded
confiding trust in God, His messengers, and His words, not the formal
acceptance of a prescribed belief.(25) Only when contact with the
non-Jewish world emphasized the need for a clear expression of the