All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope. Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between. The favors of his friends are often more humiliating than the attacks of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind. The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the crusade against the Jews is being preached and the policy of repression loudly demanded.