senschaft des Judenthums), I had no work before me that might
have served me as pattern or guide. Solomon Schechter's valuable studies
were in the main confined to Rabbinical Theology. As a matter of fact I
accepted the task only with the understanding that it should be written
from the view-point of historical research, instead of a mere dogmatic or
doctrinal system. For in my opinion the Jewish religion has never been
static, fixed for all time by an ecclesiastical authority, but has ever
been and still is the result of a dynamic process of growth and
development. At the same time I felt that I could not omit the mystical
element which pervades the Jewish religion in common with all others. As
our prophets were seers and not philosophers or moralists, so divine
inspiration in varying degrees constituted a factor of Synagogal as well
as Scriptural Judaism. Revelation, therefore, is to be considered as a
continuous force in shaping and reshaping the Jewish faith. The religious
genius of the Jew falls within the domain of ethnic psychology concerning
which science still gropes in the dark, but which progressive Judaism is
bound to recognize in its effects throughout the ages.

It is from this standpoint, taken also by the sainted founder of the
Hebrew Union College, Isaac M. Wise, that I have written this book. At the
same time I endeavored to be, as it behooves the historian, just and fair
to Conservative Judaism, which will ever claim the reverence we owe to our
cherished past, the mother that raised and nurtured us.

While a work of this nature cannot lay claim to completeness, I have
attempted to cover the whole field of Jewish belief, including also such
subjects as no longer form parts of the religious consciousness of the
modern Jew. I felt especially called upon to elucidate the historical
relations of Judaism to the Christian and Mohammedan religions and dwell
on the essential points of divergence from them. If my language at times
has been rather vigorous in defense of the Jewish faith, it was because I
was forced to correct and refute the prevailing view of the Christian
world, of both theologians and others, that Judaism is an inferior
religion, clannish and exclusive, that it is, in fact, a cult of the Old
Testament Law.

It was a matter of great personal satisfaction to me that the German work
on its appearance met with warm appreciation in the various theological
journals of America, England, and France,