Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other persons, are the following. I take them from “The American Hebrew” of April 4, 1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say something about one or two of them.
“I. Can you, of your own personal experience, find any justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals solely because they are Jews?
“II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that is given by the church acid Sunday-school? For instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him, and can only secure salvation by belief in him, and similar matters that are calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an aversion, if not a loathing, for members of 'the despised race.'
“III. Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has gone, any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?
“IV. Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice?”
As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the children of Israel. I shared more or less the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted race. I used to read in my hymn-book,--I hope I quote correctly,--
“See what a living stone The builders did refuse! Yet God has built his church thereon, In spite of envious Jews.”
I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel. Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, with the bones, of pilgrims scattered about them, and grinning at the travellers whom they could no longer devour. In the nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy there was one religion in the world,--one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable impositions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to perdition for so believing. The Jews were the believers in one of these false religions. It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and abominable lie. The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of their race.