Still, the charm of novelty being over, the question is certainly pertinent and proper to-day-Did the Sunday services or lectures render Judaism stronger and firmer in the hearts of the people, and in the estimate of the world? Did they deepen religious sentiment and conviction and create a real zeal and enthusiasm in the audiences for our ancestral faith? For this alone is the test of their actual merit. Not by numerical strength, nor by material might, but "by my spirit,' saith the Lord. It speaks very badly for the religious needs of the Sunday audiences that all but Jewish and genuinely religious topics are wanted. It is not heavenly manna but artificial stimulants that they crave or care for. Either personal magnetism or morbid sensationalism, either oratorical pyrotechnics or flashing wit must draw the crowds, or the Sunday services are doomed. What prospect does such a state of affairs offer for the future, for the healthy growth of Judaism? Is this the groundwork upon which the synagogue will stand forth as a bulwark against the materialism of the age, and as a fortress against the ever-renewed attacks of the Church militant? Will the Sunday, with its colorless cosmopolitanism, with its forms of devotion void of the positive Jewish character, awaken the dormant spark of religious fervor, arouse the much-needed self-respect in the Jew, and imbue him with heroic valor in the defence of his sacred heir-loom? If I am allowed to judge by my own experience, I venture to say there is something in the very air of the Sunday service that chills the heart. Reason alone, cold, proud reason dictates the words. The soul is not there. The true spirit of devotion and of reverence, which animates a Sabbath audience and inspires the Sabbath sermon, is altogether missing Radicalism, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred means up-rooting rather than rooting-in, is the watchword.

Indeed, the facts themselves speak in no uncertain tones. The principles of Jewish faith have nowhere taken a deeper hold on Sunday audiences. On the contrary, laxity appears to be the result. Scepticism and agnosticism are on the increase. The danger line, in fact, has been reached. The

first dire consequence of the Chicago Sabbath success is that the ancient Sabbath has been ruled out. Died from consumption. This is the rather crude official burial permit for the old Jewish Sabbath. It was merely logical consistency on the part of the Chicago Sinai President to advise also the transfer of the Jewish holidays to Sunday as the most convenient day for divine service. It must be booked to the credit of the radical Dr. E. G. Hirsch that he most emphatically protested against this proposition, accentuating the necessity of these historical days as signs and symbols of Judaism. But, after all, the very fact that the Confirmation of the Children, surely the most impressive rite in the modern synagogue, takes place for the last few years not on a Sabbath, the Festival of the Sinai Revelation, but on the Sunday preceding it, indicates the perilous drift. It is hardly necessary to enlarge on the agnostic tendency indulged in at the connivance of the leading members of the congregations by other Sunday lecturers who cater to the morbid desires of multitudes that hunger for liberty without law. They remind me of the lion's den, from which all the traces lead inward to the voracious beast, but none outward to safety.

But, while all these considerations seem barely sufficient to warrant a sudden change of view after years of fervent advocacy of these Sunday lectures by the writer, there are other and far weightier reasons which prompt me to take a different attitude towards the Sabbath question. It is THE CHANGED ATTITUDE OF THE WORLD TOWARDS THE JEW AND THE PRINCIPLES HE REPRESENTS.

The entire Reform movement was brought about by the great tidal wave of cosmopolitan enlightenment and humanity proclaimed by the French Revolution, and spiritualized, or deepened, by German Idealism. The declaration of the three principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity seemed to bring the millennium of universal peace and happiness within reach of mankind, and to fulfil the glorious vision of the Jewish prophets. What wonder if the enlightened Jew hailed this era with rapture, and rose from his long winter's sleep to his full dignity as the heavenly-appointed pioneer of

this broad religion of humanity! Readily would he pull down with his Samson-like arms, the pillars of the temple of blind authority-worship, if he could but unite all men and races upon the common ground of a pure faith in God and man in all its grand simplicity. And this great hope and aim found its correlative object in the establishment of a universal Sabbath, the day when all flesh would bow before the Lord in common adoration. What matters it whether the day is termed Sunday or Saturday in the calendar, if it be but the sign of the covenant between God and man, a token of the Messianic peace that has dawned upon the world. This was the gist of the Reform movement among the liberalminded Jews. Upon the altar of broad humanitarian religion they would willingly sacrifice their own tribal traditions.

How rudely have we all been roused from our dream! How shockingly were all the illusions of the beginning 19th century destroyed by the facts developed at its close! What a mockery has this so-called Christian civilization turned out to be! What a sham and a fraud has this era of tolerance and enlightenment become! The Middle Ages, with all their cruel blood-thirstiness, with their abominable hatred and fanaticism, have come back again. Germany's statesmen and philosophers, churchmen and university professors, have fanned anew the lurid fires of discord between classes, races, and sects and the many-headed hydra of prejudice demands its victims again by the thousands. Without cause, without a guilt of their own, hundreds of thousands of Jews are driven from their homes in the middle of the night, not as if they had lived there long before the Russian bear had laid his bloody clutches upon the law but as if they were foes and fiends, the relentless tyrant on the throne not sparing the child in the womb, nor the aged nearing the grave. And in view of such atrocities, perpetrated by a Christian ruler upon the kindred race of their Saviour, the churches keep silent. Neither the Pope, whose lips overflow with pity on the lot of both the laboring man and of the bondsman in Africa, nor the leaders of the Protestant churches, have a word of condemnation for the persecutions of these Jews. Now is this, pray,

the time for a speedy realization of Israel's Messianic hope? Does this general relapse into barbarism permit the Jew to seek alliances with the liberal wings of Christianity, whose liberality is very far as yet from lifting them above narrow prejudices and race hatred? Dare we, in the face of such great disappointments, recognize the predominance of Christian culture, by accepting the Christian Sunday as our day of rest, in place of the ancient Jewish Sabbath?

In times of persecution the least concession to the hostile power must be shunned as treason, say the rabbis. No! Let us declare before the world that we hope and long for a universal Sabbath day, not stained by the blood of persecution. Might not the Moslem Mosque again lead the Christian world back to civilization as she did before the Church took hold of Spain, and make Friday the peer and rival of Sunday? And why should we renounce the hope of setting up our timehonored Sabbath above both Sunday and Friday, to rally the entire civilized race under its shelter of divine peace and bliss?

The world still hates the Jew. "I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war." The Jew is everywhere dreaded as the superior in the race for material and intellectual wealth and power. "No Jew need apply" is still the label of Christian club-houses and summer resorts. Will Jewish Sunday Services break these barriers, erected by prejudice, or convince our fellow-citizens of our loyalty to religion and State? Why, the progressive, the radical Jew is most liable to the charge of disloyalty, of infidelism. The lofty aims of Reform Judaism are least understood by the masses who regard the same as a cowar lly surrender or as a compromise with the ruling church.

No, and a thousand times no. Our duty to-day is to maintain our Jewish identity, and to preserve our Jewish institutions without faltering, without yielding. We must, with united forces, rally around our sacred Sabbath. We can, and we must, make the influence of the Jew felt up on the great markets of the world, and force the mercantile world to recognize the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rest. Does not the Sab

ants.

bath of Sabbaths, the Jewish Day of Atonement, stop the wheels of business and silence the din and noise of the money exchange once a year? Why should the Jew not throw his whole power in the balance in favor of the still holier Sabbath, which is a loud protest against the worship of the earthly powers and the pledge and promise of a world united in peace and love? The time has arrived for a universal effort to reconquer the lost Sabbath of the Jew. We cannot but gain in the world's respect, in our own self-esteem, materially and spiritually, by a restoration of the pristine Jewish Sabbath. And, instead of lessening its powerful hold upon the people, Reformed Judaism must do its utmost in making the Sabbath resonant with the victory of the Jewish cause over its assailThe Sabbath must again be rendered the great educator and instructor of the Jew, the disseminator of the seeds of truth and of love among the thousands of the poor. The question of form and reform should no longer interfere in matters pertaining to the very essence and vitality of the Jew. If we have a right to glory in our enlightenment, let us share our light of culture with our less educated brethren. If we feel proud of our progress, let it enjoin us to lead those forward who, from causes not their own, have been left far behind in civilization. Those millions of Jews, precipitately thrown upon the wide world, will, through our efforts, gradually become a powerful lever to unhinge a religion of hatred and preach and practice a faith of veritable love. The oppressed will become the redeemers of their oppressors, and only under the sign of the ancient Sabbath will that great victory be achieved by us. The Sabbath-day must, as of yore, be devoted tooth congregational devotion and to instruction of the Jew. ish working classes. And, above all, we must do everything in our power to make the Sabbath Eve again resplendent with its pristine charm and lustre. The Friday evening was the Jewish fount of youth. From its crystal waters, the worried, the woe-stricken and wearied Jew drank and felt refreshed and re-invigorated. The domestic virtues of the Jews were cultivated at the festive board upon which the Sabbath lamp cast its radiance. We sorely need a revival of the