rity between the position of the Jew in
ancient times and what it is now. They were procurers and usurers
among the Gentiles, yet many of them were singularly high-minded and
pure. All, too, with an intense clannishness, the secret of their
success, and a sense of superiority to the Gentile which would prevent
the meanest Jew from sitting at table with a pro-consul.

"The most remarkable achievement of the Jew was to impose on Europe
for eighteen centuries his own superstitions--his ideas of the
supernatural. Jahveh was no more than Zeus or Milcom; yet the Jew got
established the belief in the inspiration of his Bible and his law.
If I were a Jew, I should have the same contempt as he has for the
Christian who acted in this way towards me, who took my ideas and
scorned me for clinging to them."

Here may be quoted a passage from a letter to Professor George
Romanes:--

I have a great respect for the Nazarenism of Jesus--very
little for later "Christianity." But the only religion that
appeals to me is prophetic Judaism. Add to it something from
the best Stoics and something from Spinoza and something from
Goethe, and there is a religion for men. Some of these days I
think I will make a cento out of the works of these people.

This cento, however, he never made. Had he done so, he would assuredly
have illustrated his saying to Charles Kingsley:--

My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves
to fact; not to try and make facts harmonize with my
aspirations--

a notion expanded thus:--

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest
manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian
conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down
before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every
pre-conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever
abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only
begun to learn content and peace of mind since I resolved at
all costs to do this.

PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET ST., LONDON, E.C.4.

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