A Summary of Modern Jewish History

The Jews are everywhere, in the old world and in the new. They can be found in Jamaica, in New England, in Washington’s America as well as in Bolívar’s, and even in Austral lands. If this people were not remarkable in so many other respects, it would still be so at the least for its universality and for the future-oriented spirit that governs its destiny. Though their true believers and their wives have longed for a return of the Jewish nation to that ancient land of Jerusalem, we do not think the Jews are destined to do so: we believe, however, that the day will come when men of all nations will have achieved such a harmony of morality and doctrine, of political and religious institutions, that this people, which is everywhere, will be able to feel part of one common nation. It is a long way, I realize, from the wretched quarrels reawakened among us by the ghosts of Loyola and Jansenius to that future of universal reform; but when a few obscure men proclaimed Christianity, a reform so quickly perverted by the Jewish religion, the whole universe was pagan. Paganism laughingly witnessed the quarreling orators, sophists, and philosophers wedded to their systems, when poor fishermen suddenly proclaimed a new faith, and the face of the world was changed.