Page:The message of the hour - four sermons delivered on the new years' day, and the day of atonement, 5651-1890 (IA messageofhourfou00moseiala).pdf/44

 to-day, the question comes home to us with double force: What are we? If not a Religions Community, inspired by the life-mission of Israel, what place do we hold in the organic life of modern nations? It is not difficult to find the answer, though it be humiliating to our self-love. Then there is no room for Israel on this earth! Then we stand on a level with the Gypsies or some other wandering tribes who have outlived the mission of their people, and who, in smaller or larger numbers, present the painful spectacle of a degraded race. The irreligious Jew, the Jewish atheist, is an anomaly, an historical self-contradiction. To claim superiority on the strength of some racial differences and distinctions; to boast of the keenness of the Jewish intellect and ability, so gloriously demonstrated by the large number of our successful merchants, financiers, artists, statesmen, or even politicians; to "point with pride" to borrow a favorite phrase of our great after-dinner orators and political aspirants to the great men that come from "our people," gracing the pages of modern history, our Rothschilds, Bleichroders, Mocattos and Belmonts; our Disraelis, Cremieaux and Laskers, our Mayerbeers, Mendelssohns, Rubinsteins and Offenbachs, our Rachels, Davisons, Barnais and Sarah Bernhardts not to mention the innumerable host of famous Jewish chess-players, billiardists, dancers and ward-politicians to hold these up as the types of Israel's genius and the flowering of our millennial historical career, is a most sorrowful misinterpretation of the grandest and holiest mission, of the noblest and loftiest purpose that has ever been conceived by any nation on the earth! All these worldly achievements may be very desirable, but they are of secondary importance. Israel shall not exclude himself from the practical life of the nations, but shall remain in close contact with all tha^t concerns the welfare of the people with whom he shares a common political life; but his true, his higher mission, is to be a prophet of God, to exemplify in his domestic relations, in his social intercourse, in his religious associations and intellectual labors, the spirit that animated the prophets of old, the spirit that breathes through the Mosaic legislation, aiming to tone down the harsh distinctions of wealth and poverty, to inspire with the fervor of his enthusiasm the moral endeavor of the age, to clarify