In the Appendix will be found a series of letters written for this publication by thirty or more representative Jewish scholars, on “_Jesus of Nazareth from the Present Jewish Point of View_.” The Appendix contains other matter suggested by the legend of “The Wandering Jew,” prepared by D. S. Gregory, LL.D., and by Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. The general INTRODUCTION is self-explanatory.
It is believed that no book now before the public can be made nearly so helpful as this one in interesting the minds of readers, young and old, in the events that closely followed in Palestine the Crucifixion, and marked the conflict between early Judaism and Christianity, and ended in the final destruction of Jerusalem.
The reader will now and then be reminded of some of the more striking passages in two or three of the popular religious novels published in the past decade. But, as it is not given even to great geniuses to remember _forward_, our author will scarcely be exposed to the accusation of having borrowed from these later writers.
All existing rights in this book, held in this country or England, have been purchased by us.
CRAWFORDSVILLE, IND., _September 1, 1900_.
GENTLEMEN: I have learned that you have in mind the issuance of a new edition of Croly’s story of “The Wandering Jew.” Perhaps you will lend a willing ear to a suggestion or two, so much is the book in my love.
In my judgment, the six greatest English novels are “Ivanhoe,” “The Last of the Barons,” “The Tale of Two Cities,” “Jane Eyre,” “Hypatia,” and this romance of Croly’s. If Shakespeare had never been born; if Milton, Byron, and Tennyson were singers to be, and Bacon, Darwin, and Ruskin unknown; if there had been no British dramatists, no British historians, no works in British libraries significant of British science and philosophy, no alcoves glutted with bookish remains of British moralists and preachers, still the six works named would of themselves suffice to constitute a British literature.
This is bold, I know: bold in assertion, and even bolder in the lift of Croly’s story from the ground to a place in the upper sky. Can I justify the classification? Certainly, if only your patience and my time permitted.
Here, to begin, is a broad adverse generality,—the very worst of possible arguments against the book is, that of the five great classics with which I have thrust it into association, it is the least known to-day by the general public. Yet the admission is not in the least decisive of merits; in inquisitorial phrase it serves merely to put objections to question.