"WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE"
Who Is My Co-Religionist?
INNUMERABLE attempts have have been made to define religion, and yet its true inwardness remains elusive to the last. It is now the merest commonplace to say that genuine religion does not reside in mere dogma, in the assertion or acceptance of certain statements and beliefs; there seems no need of repeating that mere outward adherence, mere observance, ceremony or lip-homage do not prove religiousness; that the upturned eye,
> ee ee ee Nt ee oe the folded hand, the “soft-pedal” modulation are tricks easily mastered by the hypocrite, by the conscious or un-, conscious Tartuffe, seems an elementary lesson; that a man may, in the eyes of the world, devote his life and his energies to the promotion of a faith, and yet be utterly bare of any real appreciation of its spiritual worth, seems perfectly trite and simple.
Of course, it is one thing to have learned these truisms and quite another to apply them in their proper places and on the suitable occasion. To know the definition of a hypocrite and time-server is one thing; to correctly. classify a well-disguised specimen is quite another. On the stage any child can point out the villain and identify the hero; they bear their trade-marks—for the assistance of such superficial observers as constitute a theatre audience—in face, gesture, bearing, voice; otherwise attending a play and understanding a plot would not be an entertainment, but a piece of hard brain work which a public, coming for entertainment, would not put up with.
It is different in real life; there villain and hero refuse to wear convenient uniforms by which to be told apart. Your villain has all sorts of personal charms and affable ways; his genial smile, his winning, obliging manners captivate you; he manages to do a lot of good, such as is likely to promote his other ends and give him a good character at no very great expense. Your hero, on the other hand, has all sorts of awkwardnesses, homely touches,. uninteresting, commonplace associations, -even incidental rudenesses, which very effectively disguise the glamor and the romance of his heroism from the valet-eyes of the common throng. . Most of us consume so much time and effort in learning how to make out surface distinctions that the deep things which directly contradict surface appearances altogether elude us.
Another group of facts which it is well to understand and which American Jews, being still on the threshold of their cultural unfoldment, have not yet begun to weigh, is that bound up with the psychologi-
cal workings of ecclesiasticism. In a humble, poverty-stricken faith the elbower and climber cannot work much mischief; there are no plums to attract him. In the struggling days of an incipient movement which has to win recognition for its principles and aims from a stubborn majority in possession of power, in the. days of the revolutionary and the pioneer, it is not the sordid and mercenary type, the ambitious time-server, the obsequious lackey, wily: politician and subtle diplomatist who place their hungry talents at the service of an as -yet uncrowned cause; except for a desultory daring spirit who ventures to speculate in futures, these are the men -who prefer to espouse the party which has secured the spoils. As a consequence, a religious body grown rich and powerful, dispensing conspicuous pulpits with large salaries; must expect to be ‘plagued and infested with a taint of vigorous self-seekers. :
In every pursuit and profession one finds at the top or near the top the class of more or less unscrupulous egotists whose intense ambition, supported by every degree of cleverness—from the grades of plodding industry and wide-awake shrewdness up to the highest and rarest talent—whose intense personal ambition carries them inevitably to places of eminence. In a riper civilization, in the meed of lasting fame, such vulgarians are hopelessly outranked by those superior men whose ability and aspirations stand in the service of an ideal, who live not for the satisfaction of personal appetites, whether for wealth, power or fame, not for the exploitation of the swift moment, but to lift humanity out of some slough, to earn the benedictions of coming ages.
The ministry, when it has “places in the sun” to offer, falls under the ills of other professions: it trains up its own “pillars of 5001607." We are acquainted with these characters, as they are met in other denominations, from the novels and dramas without number which castigate their foibles, which satirize the bishop who draws his skirts from contact with the poor, which picture the fashionable: minister, hushed to awe in the presence of the multimillionaire, siding indignantly with the crimes of big business, as against the angelic toil of his colleague in the slums who has made common cause with the poor; or that elegant type of ecclesiastic who delights the society ladies of his flock with the artistic frills of his ritualism, and is shocked at the, honesty of an earnest colleague who cannot reconcile his conscience to an acceptance of the outworn theologies and the obsolete dogmas of the Middle Ages. The Christian ministry, as its sincerity and its earnestness, its humility and unworldliness have been, poisoned by the sweets dispensed by wealth, has been exposed to contempt ,and derision by some of the world’s foremost masters of fiction; that we are rearing corresponding types through corresponding causes—“wie es sich christelt, so juedelt es sich”—has fortunately not yet occurred to any popular wizard of the pen.
It is very instructive right here, how excellent an acid test Zionism constitutes as between idealist and self-seeker, a test, of course, which must be employed