so subtle that it
has never been explained. Gibbon in this connection says at least one
irrefutable thing, and that is, that the Jewish people are men and
women. Christians are men and women, also. All are human beings, and it
is quite likely that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong, but time and chance happeneth to them all.

I am not sure that Gibbon is right when he says that the Christians were
lucky in that Constantine did not turn Jew. To be persecuted is not
wholly a calamity, but to persecute is to do that for which Nature
affords no compensation. The persecutor dies, but the persecuted lives
on forever.

The struggle for existence which the Jew has had to make is the thing
that has differentiated him and made him strong. Those first
Christians--Primitive Christians--who lived from the time of Paul to
that of Constantine, were a simple, direct, sincere and honest
people--opinionated no doubt, and obstinately dogmatic, but with virtues
that can never be omitted nor waived. They were economical, industrious
and filled with the spirit of brotherhood, and they possessed a fine
pride concerning their humility, as most ascetics do. Humility is a form
of energy. It is simply going after the thing by another route, and
deceiving yourself as to the motive.

The Primitive Christians had every characteristic that distinguished the
Jew of the Middle Ages--those characteristics which invite persecution
and wax strong under it.

Poverty and persecution seem necessary factors in fixing upon a people a
distinctive and peculiar religion. Persecution and poverty have no power
to stamp out a religion--all they do is to stain it deeper into the
hearts of its votaries. Centuries of starvation and repression deepened
the religious impulses of the Irish, and it has ever been the same with
the Jews.

If the Jew is criticized in America, it is on account of that buttinski
bumptiousness upon which he has no monopoly, but which goes with the
newly-made rich of any nationality who have little to recommend them
beyond the walletoski.

There are no poor Jews natives of America, and it is worth while noting
that our richest citizens are not Jews, either. American-born Jews have
enough. The poverty-stricken Jews in this country come from Russia,
Bulgaria and Roumania; and their children will have money to loan, if
not to incinerate, because they possess the virtues that beckon all good
things in their direction.