Zionism—A Jewish Mission
IT has been observed, by one given to terse and pithy sayings, that the people who claim to have the only true mission make it a boast that they have no missions at all. The author of this saying forgets that every Jew is supposed to be a missionary, and if the actual facts do not bear out the supposition at the present day, so far as the individual is concerned, can it be denied that the continued existence and preservation of the Jewish people as a religious entity has done more to keep the monotheistic idea alive than all the preachings of paid or unpaid missionaries the world has ever known?
It is true that the Jew has no particular admiration for the missionary as we moderns know him. His hostile feeling is based largely on a long and bitter experience with this class, an experience which he could not forget if he wanted to, and ought not forget if he could. He sees the absurdity and inconsistency of sending missionaries to far-off peoples when so many nominal Christians at home are in need of the ethical training which the missionaries claim to give; of spending millions for the spread of religious doctrines in strange lands when there is so much poverty, misery and want to be relieved at home; of trying to convert Asiatic or African governments to Christianity when our own State and municipal governments so often reek with corruption in its most degrading forms; of trying to convert a harmless people, such as the Chinese are when let alone, and not daring to send a single person to try to convert the people of a benighted despotism, such as Russia is, to the ways of righteousness and justice.
These absurdities do exist and the inconsistencies are patent. The records of the societies for carrying on foreign missions which exist among the Christian denominations of America and Western Europe, show a stupendous expenditure reaching to many millions of dollars. They show attempts made in various countries to convert Jews at a cost that is at once ludicrous and sublime. They also show, at times, methods which do not commend themselves to the moral sense of unbiased people; for these methods too often exhibit a system which is nothing else than the undisguised bribery of persons whose ignorance and poverty lay them particularly open to the seductive influences of these peculiar arts.
But when all this is admitted it must be confessed that there is another and a brighter side to the picture; that the missionary activity of a religious denomination has a tendency to encourage a spirit of idealism on the part of its constituents, and makes them familiar with the truism that self-sacrifice is an essential factor in the preservation of every religious system. Many, very many of the missionaries sent out to distant countries have displayed the loftiest heroism and the noblest self-sacrifice. They have in many instances shown an unhesitating willingness to yield up all, even life itself, for the sake of the cause they represent. They have frequently served the interests of the people they have tried to convert, at great peril and in the midst of dangers and difficulties. Their spirit has indirectly influenced the people whose money has equipped them, to broader conceptions of duty