528                   A. M. E. REVIEW.

American Synagogues, all echo and re-echo this conception of
"the Jewish mission." Among the masses it naturally trans-
formed itself into nationalism, but even this narrower concept
of "the chosen people" found poetic expression as a tender in-
timacy between God and Israel.
   "With everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of Israel, Thy people;
a Law and commandments, statutes and judgments, hast Thou taught us.
 . . . Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who lovest Thy people, Israel."
  Such is the evening benediction still uttered by millions of
Hebrew lips.
  And the performance of this Law and these commandments,
statutes and judgments, covering as they did the whole of life,
produced--despite the tendency of all law to over-formality
a domestic ritual of singular beauty and poetry, a strenuous di-
etary and religious regime, and tender and self-controlling traits
of character, which have combined to make the Jewish masses
as far above their non-Jewish environment as the Jewish
wealthier classes are below theirs. No demos in the world is
so saturated with idealism and domestic virtue, and when it
is compared with the yet uncivilized and brutalized masses of
Europe, when, for example, the lowness of its infantile mor-
tality or the healthiness of its school children is contrasted with
the appalling statistics of its neighbors, there is sound scientific
warrant for endorsing even in its narrowest form its claim to be
"a chosen people."
  This extraordinary race arose as a pastoral clan in Mesopo-
tamia, roved to Palestine, thence to Egypt, and after a period
of slavery returned to Palestine as conquerors and agricultur-
ists, there to practise the theocratic code imposed by Moses
(perhaps the noblest figure in all history), and to evolve in the
course of the ages a poetic and prophetic literature of unpar-
alleled sublimity.  That union of spirituality, intellectuality
and fighting-power in the breed, which raised it above all
ancient races except the Greek, was paid for by an excessive
individualism which distracted and divided the State. Jerusa-
lem fell before the legions of Titus. But--half a century be-
fore it fell--it had produced Christianity and thus entered on




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Date:  10/1911