The Maccabaean

notion of storytelling is that history and philosophy can be best embodied in a tale. J’s kind .of history deals neither with the wide world nor with individuals; it gives us, through a retrospect of years, the history of tribes and nations. Each story that he tells, as obvious story, is masterly with the charm of unmoral folklore. Yet each story contains moral implications. These implications are not emphasized, since tribal developments are the chief subject. On general questions of conduct, J holds the scales as an easy human-

been published during the present generation to fill a large library, but that during this period not a single volume has appeared in England, America or Germany which gives a detailed account of the work done by missionaries who first preached the Christian faith in the various countries of Europe.

ahh יש 1400+וווו > כווטן וצל שןו1\ 14+ + Missionary work for the conversion of the pagans of Europe to the religion which was an offshoot of Judaism began. in the Balkan peninsula and in Italy, but neither of these regions became nominally Christian until after Ireland and a large part of Great Britain had been evangelized. So Dr. Robinson bezins his account with Ireland, passes on to Scotland, England, and Wales; then considers France, Italy, the Balkan peninsula, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, the Scandinavian countries, and Russia. Dr, Robinson tells the reader that his order is largely chronological—he has placed “the countries in the order in which Christianity became generally established as 6 religion of their peoples.” One notes how late in the list Germany comes, and the suspicion occurs that the job of evangelization was per- hane nat very tharanshly done.

To the Jewish reader the most interesting part of this book will probably be the special section devoted by Dr. Robinson to describing the efforts that have been made to convert the Jews. He starts out with a frank admission. He supposes someone asking this question: “What people has been treated by the Christian church during a period embracing the greater part of its history with a cruelty that has created an insuperable obstacle in the way of their conversion, and which goes far to prove that it has completely misunderstood, if it has not actually repudiated, its Master’s teachings?” The answer would have to be, The Jews. He remarks that “their treatment by those who professed to be Christ’s followers is an ineffaceable blot on the page of Christian history, and affords to the Jews something more than a plausible excuse for looking askance at the teaching which the descendants of their persecutors would fain commend to them today.”

This is candid enough, although one may question the necessity for any excuse for rejecting the doctrines of Christianity, and one may further object to the inclusion of the three words “the descendants of” in the passage just quoted. Dr. Robinson goes back to the very beginnings of the Christian era to trace the beginnings of anti-Semitism among the Christian fathers; one imagines that there are still traces of it to be found here and there at the present time. He exposes the wickedness and futility of the forcible conversions. Some interesting documents are quoted by Dr. Robinson to show the almost uniform persecution of the Jews by the heads of the Christian church. So great a man as Bishop Grosstete of Lincoln is found rebuking the Countess of Winchester because she had shown some kindly feelings towards Jews. Peter, the celebrated abbot of Cluny, preaches detestation and persecution to Louis VII. Thomas Aquinas regards it as an axiom that the Tewe are elavee of the church.

LG JUNO G2 GAAP VE SEEN WENA EEO Sometimes the conversion has worked the other way, as in the instance of a Franciscan friar named Corneglio, who in the time of Pope Julius 111 (1550-55) became a Jew and began to preach in Rome against Christianity. He was seized and burned, and as his conversion was attributed to his having read the Talmud, copies of this were publicly burned at Rome. Venice. and Bologna.

Dr. Robinson’s record of the conversion of the Jews in the various countries of Europe becomes, as might be expected, a particularly poignant account of the horrible persecutions to which they were subjected. Usually his list of conversions ends abruptly when the Jews are given civil liberty, and it is no longer possible to herd them in a church and give them their choice of baptism or death. Dr. Robinson, however, puts down the facts with no pleasure to himself, and he remarks that “it is pleasing to record that one of the first proclamations issued by the Revolutionary Government in March, 1917, announced the removal of all political and religious restrictions from the Jewish communities in Russia.” M. J. H.

Jerusalem, the magic of your name,Beloved of faithful Israel through the years,Has seared itself into my heart like flame,And rent my soul apart in crimson tearsAt thought of all your dear, dumb agony,And how they tore your children from your breastThese many centuries of contumely;An unweaned exile band, sans peace, sans rest.

O ancient city of an ancient race, Your share of sorrow you have proudly borne, Forever yearning—dreaming dreams divine. But lo! This is the hour to efface The servile past, to greet a fairer morn! And you shall be a new-born nation’s shrine!