Outlines of Liberal Judaism

Chapter XII. The Mission of Israel

[ . . . ] God chose the Jews: they are a chosen people, though not a people (as I hold and as I shall subsequently maintain) in the sense that the English or the Servians are a people, but rather a religious brotherhood, a “kingdom of priests.” A chosen people, not chosen for themselves, but for others. [ . . . ]

A chosen people, not chosen for themselves, but for others. A chosen people, but not chosen in order to acquire prosperity, or power, or numbers; not chosen for the sake of art, or science, or philosophy, but chosen to learn, and to help in diffusing, true doctrine and true experience about God and righteousness and the relation of man to God and of God to man.

A chosen people: a consecrated brotherhood. A brotherhood consecrated to an end; a people to be purged and purified by sorrow and suffering towards the carrying out of an end which many of themselves are still unable to realise.

A chosen people; a consecrated brotherhood; chosen to gather in experience and to treasure it up, to transmit and to diffuse it. For religious knowledge is, in one sense, unlike other knowledge. It is far more intimately connected with the lives and souls of those who know it. It is not therefore merely knowledge. It is an experience. What do I mean by an experience? I mean quite simply that religion is something which is felt and lived. Thus men experience sorrow or joy: in another sense they experience self-sacrifice or courage. Religion is in the man; it is not outside him, though it depends upon that which is not only within him, but also outside him. Religious knowledge is an internal conviction attained by processes of thought and incomings or inrushes of feelings, which are not learnt from a book, but are acquired in life. Man’s total experience includes his religious experience. A knowledge of human nature cannot be acquired from books, though books may help us to acquire it. It cannot be acquired from other men’s lives, though these (and the record of them) may suggest and confirm a man’s personal knowledge. That knowledge itself must be won by experience. And so of religious knowledge. It, too, must be won by a man’s own efforts, his own progress, his own feelings, his own spiritual travail—in a word, his own experience.