III
⭘ Cornill: In the same masterly address, Humanity in the Old Testament, this great Biblical scholar says:—
‘But not only to man does the humanitarianism of the Torah extend, it cares for the brute as well, and places it likewise under legal protection, to which I know of no analogy in older extra-Israelitish codes. The Israelite ascribed a soul even to the brute, and saw in it a creature of God, which, while subservient to man by God, yet should not be helplessly exposed to his caprice. What a truly humanitarian sentiment finds expression in the Law; “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn”. The brute should not perform hard labour, and at the same time have food before its eyes, without the possibility of eating therefrom. I remember some time ago, to have read that one of the richest Italian real-estate owners, at the grape-harvest, fastened iron muzzles to his miserable, fever-stricken workmen, so that it might not occur to these poor peasants, working for starvation wages under the glowing sun of Southern Italy, to satiate their burning thirst and their gnawing hunger with a few of the millions of grapes of the owner.’
⭘ Literature and Dogma, 1, 4, and xi, 6.
⭘ History of the People of Israel. Preface.
⭘ Lotze: Microcosm, III.
⭘ Frazer: Passages of the Bible chosen for their Literary Beauty.—Preface.
Compare the following from the same writer’s The Folklore of the Old Testament (Macmillan, 1918):—
‘The revelation of the baser elements which underlay the civilization of ancient Israel, as they underlie the civilization of modern Europe, serves rather as a foil to enhance by contrast the glory of a people which, from such dark depths of ignorance and cruelty, could rise to such bright heights of wisdom and virtue. The annals of savagery and superstition unhappily compose a large part of human literature; but in what other volume shall we find, side by side with that melancholy record, psalmists who poured forth their sweet and solemn strains of meditative piety in the solitude of the hills or in green pastures and beside still waters; prophets who lit up their beatific visions of a blissful future with the glow of an impassioned imagination; historians who bequeathed to distant ages the scenes of a remote past embalmed for ever in the amber of a pellucid style? These are the true glories of the Old Testament and of Israel.’
⭘ Huxley: Educational Essays.
⭘ Huxley: ‘From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang the intensity of family life that amid all dispersions and persecutions has preserved the individuality of the Hebrew race; that love of independence that under the most adverse circumstance has characterized the Jew; that burning patriotism that flamed up in the Maccabees and bared the breasts of Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian phalanx and the resistless onset of Roman legion; that stubborn courage that in exile and in torture held the Jew to his faith. It kindled that fire that has made the strains of Hebrew seers and poets phrase for us the highest exaltations of thought; that intellectual vigour that has over and over again made the dry staff bud and blossom. And it has exerted its power wherever the influence of the Hebrew scriptures has been felt. It has toppled thrones and cast down hierarchies.’ (Henry George.)
⭘ Renan: History of the People of Israel, chap. 7.
⭘ Moses. This splendid lecture should be read in full. It is published in a penny edition by the ‘Land Value’ Publication Dept., Strand.
⭘ Dow: ‘Hebrew and Puritan’, J. Q. R., iii.
⭘ Rhys: Lyrical Poetry from the Bible. (Dent.) Introduction.
⭘ Cornill: The Culture of Ancient Israel. Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago. ‘The Psalms in the World’s Literature.’
⭘ Jowett: Selected Passages from the Theological Writings, 1903, p. 53.
⭘ The Prophets of Israel. Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago, 1895.
⭘ Stanley: History of the Jewish Church, iii, lecture 45.
⭘ ‘Social Life in France in the Fourteenth Century’ (The Jews), Fortnightly Review, vol. 57.
⭘ The Shield, edited by Gorky, &c., A. A. Knopf, New York, 1917. ‘Russia and the Jews.’
⭘ Herford: Pharisaism: Its aim and methods, 1912, chap. vi.
⭘ ‘A Theist’s Impressions of Judaism’, J. Q. R., xix.
⭘ Israel among the Nations. New York, 1893.
⭘ Rationalism in Europe, chap. vi.
⭘ Short History of the English People, chap. viii, i.
⭘ Essay and Speech on Jewish Disabilities, ed. I. Abrahams and S. Levy. (Jewish Historical Society of England) 1910.
⭘ From ‘A Letter on the Jew’ sent to a Jewish meeting, Capetown, July 1, 1906.
⭘ Milyukov: In The Shield, ‘The Jewish Question in Russia’.
⭘ Lecky: Democracy and Liberty, 1896.
⭘ The Talmudic Story is from Three Legends (Berlin, 1904), written and published by Tolstoy in aid of the victims of the Kishineff pogrom.
⭘ Schreiner: See Note 177.
⭘ The British Protest, together with the French, German, and Russian Protests, were republished in pamphlet form by the Jewish Chronicle in 1913.
⭘ Quoted in Davies’s Gems from the Fathers (Bagster).