Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/486

 *piness. If ever Judaism should attain to universal dominion, and the principles of Judaism be brought into action, the whole Gentile world would be doomed to misery and ignorance. By pronouncing that amongst Gentiles there is no marriage-tie, it would rob them of all domestic peace. By sentencing every Gentile reader of the Bible to death, it would deprive them of all the consolations and instructions of the Word of God, and by forbidding them to keep a Sabbath, it would, so far as it could, annihilate every token of God's care and loving-kindness. The triumph of Christianity, on the contrary, and the full development of all its principles, would fill the world with peace, and joy, and happiness. The fundamental principles of Christianity, namely, that the Messiah has died for the sins of the whole world, sets forth God as the tender father who cares for all his children, and therefore teaches all men to regard one another as fellow-heirs of the same eternal salvation. It does not deny that Israel has peculiar privileges as a nation, but fully acknowledges that "they are still beloved for the fathers' sakes," and that they are yet to be the benefactors of the human race as they were of old. But it asserts, at the same time, that God is not the God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also, and thus makes it possible for Jew and Gentile to love each other. The only foundation for the peace and unity of all nations is the recognition of God as the Father of all, and this foundation is the very corner-stone of Christianity, whilst it neither does nor can form any part of the fabric of Judaism. Christianity teaches that the first and great commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; and the second is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; and teaches, at the same time, that all men are our neighbours. Judaism teaches that circumcision is the greatest of all the commandments, and that none but Jews and proselytes are neighbours. Thus Judaism divides, whilst Christianity tends to unite, all the children of men in the bands of peace. It has only one principle of God's dealings to men, and that principle is love; and one principle for the guiding of man's conduct to men, and that is love also. Let not the Jewish reader think that we Gentiles wish to ascribe any merit to ourselves, as if by our own wit or wisdom we had found out a religious system superior to anything that Israel had been able to devise. Far from it; we acknowledge again, as we did in the first number, that we are only disciples of one part of the Jewish nation. From the Jews Christianity came to us. It has been a light to lighten us Gentiles, but we acknowledge its Divine Author as the glory of his people Israel. All we mean by instituting the comparison is, to show those who still adhere to the oral law, that there is another Jewish religion infinitely superior, and more like that of Moses and