has been that of one God--the noblest of
all human ideals--early attained, and persistently clung to by the
whole race. Mohammedan monotheism is noble, and is the main source of
the strength of those races which have embraced the religion of
Mahomet; but the Mohammedan doctrine of One God arrived thousands of
years after the Jewish, and never was so pure. The most significant
sentence in the English speech is the first sentence of the Hebrew
Bible--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That
is the first of the Jewish ideals, to which the race has been true in
all environments, in weal and in woe; and that belief has delivered it
from many sorts of enfeebling and degrading terrors and superstitions.

_The Ideal of the Family_

Another Jewish ideal which has counted for much in the history of the
race is the ideal of the family--pure, honorable, and sacred. The
veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the
religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the
Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race
has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that
commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee," although in many lands and not in any land of their
own. The organized human society most likely to prove durable or
permanent is that which possesses and maintains in theory and practise
a lofty ideal of the family. The reverence shown by children toward
their parents and the devotion of parents to their children, which
prevail in Jewish families, are both more intense than is usual in
Christian families. These sentiments yield infinite good in any human
society; they produce, and pass on from generation to generation,
purity of life, family honor, and a real consecration of the best
human affections. That is the second potent Jewish ideal.

_The Ethical Ideal of the Ten Commandments_

The third effective ideal is the ethical teaching contained in the Ten
Commandments, the most compact and yet comprehensive code of morals
ever written. These ethical principles have been held before the
Jewish race for thousands of years wherever it has lived, in good
times and bad, an ideal toward which the race has always struggled,
though with frequent lapses. This code contains the institution of the
Sabbath Day, which by itself accounts for much of the extraordinary
endurance of the race.

The Jews