ss. These address themselves to scholars alone, or
chiefly to a cultivated few, and address themselves to them eloquently
and gloriously. The hymns of the Jews have so interpenetrated the very
heart of humanity, so identified themselves with the best longings, the
noblest aspirations, the purest hopes, and the deepest sorrows of man,
that still, after more than twenty centuries, that wonderful hymnology
breathes up day after day, week after week, from millions of households
and hearts. They outbreathe its fervid aspirations toward a purer and
diviner life. They give expression to its profound wailings over
degradation and fall. They give utterance on all the inscrutable
mysteries of existence; and ever and anon as the clouds and darkness
break away from the Infinite Love,--they burst forth into the exultant
cry, "God reigneth, let the earth be glad. . . . Give thanks at
remembrance of His _holiness_."

But important as is this factor of Judaism, there is another generally
considered which has perhaps exercised a still more profound and
cumulative influence on the civilisation especially of the West. This
lies in the intense indestructible nationality of the race. Eighteen
centuries have passed since they became a people, "scattered and peeled,"
their "holy and beautiful house" a ruin, their capital a desolation,
their land proscribed to the exile's foot. During these centuries deluge
after deluge of so-called barbarians has swept over Asia and Europe: Hun
and Tartar, Alan and Goth, Suev and Vandal,--we attach certain vague
meanings to the names, but can the most learned scholar identify one
individual of the true unmingled blood? All have disappeared, merged in
the race they overran, in the kingdoms they conquered and devastated. The
Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed,
persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined,
as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and
beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative
nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism,
"God is _one_." Be He the incarnation of pitiless vengeance, hardening
Pharaoh's heart that He may execute sevenfold wrath on him and his
people; be He the Good Shepherd, who "gathers the lambs in His arms," and
for their sakes "tempers His rough wind in the day of His east wind;"--to
the Jew He has been and is, "I am the L