the front above the main portal there is to be found the inviting legend: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden." Matth. 11, 28. While on the railing there is a board with the warning: "Trespassers will be prosecuted. Dangerous dog within."

Between the lessons of Christ and the lives of the western peoples there has yawned for almost fifteen hundred years a deep abyss, and the contrasts are incompatible and irreconcilable. This discrepancy between religion and life, between lesson and instinct, is peculiar to the western peoples because with them religion did not evolve naturally, but was imposed from outside. Christianity did not originate in their blood nor did it penetrate to their blood; it remained paint and varnish. Powerfully as the Church permeated the life of the Aryan peoples, the effect of the purely Christian idea embodied in it and by it was insignificant. Reluctantly accepted, imposed by hellish coercion, it was not fused to the innermost nature of the Aryan. The way of life, economics, politics, public administration, warfare did not allow themselves to be influenced by the maxims of St. Paul. A religion cannot be transferred as lightly as a uniform or a new machine. Even admitted that in no religion are its professors upon a par with its ethics, the difference between the teachings of religion and life in the west is espe cially great. The nations are varnished with "Christianity"; mind, blood, instincts have not become Christian. The misfortune of the Jews consists in the Christian nations calling themselves Christian without being it.

Socrates propagated the most glorious moral doctrines which, nevertheless, did not succeed in transforming the Athenians into moral beings after his heart. Seneca, in his works, pronounced such splendid ethical maxims that they were likened to those of the Apostle Paul. But his friend was Nero (who set the human torches on fire in his gardens, and who threw the first Christians before the beasts) and his contemporary Rome was full of ethical monstrosities. But Judaism succeeded, not only by beautiful words, but by its whole social evolution in educating the true Jewish heart which is easily moved, stirred, gripped by pity and mercy...

Indeed, Christianity also was not deficient in men before whose minds floated the dream of a refined humanity by the complete fulfilment of the teachings of Jesus Christ and by suppressing the hereditary pagan instincts of hate against the aliens.

A great many voices of such men we have already quoted and we could cite many more.1 The most remarkable, which

(1) The famous leader of the Catholics of Germany, Windthorst, said on November 20, 1880, in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies:

"One of the chief points about which Jews can complain is, according to my view, this: that when a single Jews has, or a part of a number of Jews have done something which in justice should be condemned, this action is generalized and ascribed to the mass, as if it concerned the entire Jewry. This is basically perverted and basically contemptible. If there is a complaint against individuals or a section, this should be concretely directed against the individuals or the section but the matter should never be generalized and the entire Jewry condemned, for among them are persons of the most honorable character."

The following is quoted from a French Journal:

"An official of the city administration has made the observation that when a single mouse gnaws into a bag of flour and eats half of the contents, the observers of the damage will say, 'It was mice'. But when a dozen cats fall upon a basin of milk and empty it, then in answer to the question, 'Who drank the milk?' it will be said 'It was the cat.' In the first case, an entire species is accused of the offense of a single individual; in the second, an individual is blamed for the offense of a number. This is the case today in the history of the Jews. For a single Jew who lays his hand on the sack, people would like to stone all Jews. And if a few poor devils of another race play a dirty trick, only one is accused. I can relate tales of true benevolence, magnanimity, self-sacrifice on the part of certain Jews of my acquaintance, and tales of miserliness, avarice, thievishness on the part of certain Christians whom I also know. It is 11 o'clock at night. A woman, carrying in her arms a two-year old child, falls wearily upon a bench in the Avenue Lamotte-Fouquet. A young man, a clerk in a book store, passes by. He stands still. What are you doing here? 'Sir, I wish to take my child to the Rue de Sèvres and will then seek a night's lodging for myself. I have eaten nothing since this morning, and I have sat down in order to gather some strength.' 'Here are 30 sous, it is all I have with me! give me the child, I shall carry him.' He accompanied the woman and carried the child, too heavy for her weakness. This young man was a Jew. A few days later, a rich man who has just alighted from a fiacre and paid the driver, wishes to enter his house. It is midnight. He pushes with his foot an aged man who is stretched out upon the steps. 'What are you doing here?' 'Sir, I collapsed from hunger

should perhaps be a safe-conduct for our Jews, is found in manuscript form in the National Library of Parma, where it is No. 402; Dr. A. Berliner has revealed it to the light of day. It runs as follows:

"Answer which the Pope addressed to the King of France, in which he defended the Jews because they are not in the least guilty of the death of the founder of the Christian religion.

An analogy for this is the tale of that king who entrusted the care of his garden with the command that he should allow no one to enter the garden. Anyone who should attempt to gain entrance was to be killed. One day the King wished to test his friend; to this end, he disguised himself, donned different clothes and presented himself at the entrance to the garden in order to be admitted, by giving out that he was the King. To this the keeper answered 'You may not enter, for the King has forbidden it, but you are not the King'. As the King was about to use force, his friend the watchman arose and struck him down. This is the same as the case before us. God gave his people Israel the law in which he commanded them: "I am the Eternal thy God. Thou shalt have no other Gods besides me... Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb" (Deut. 4, 15). Further: 'No man can see me and live.' Therefore when the founder of our religion appeared, he came in human form, set himself up as God, so that they killed him according to the legal prescription. If they had known that it was God himself, they would by no means have done this. Also in the world to come they will be able to clear themselves in this way." That is how a Pope in the dark Middle Ages regarded the matter. I conclude this chapter with the words of such an exemplary apostle of the teachings of Christ.

I have before me the Prayer-book for Enlightened Catholic Christians. Edited by Philipp Joseph Brunner, Doctor of Theology, Parish Priest and School-Inspector in Tiefenbach and Eichelberg. By permission of the Reverend Vicar in Bruchsal. Seventh edition. Heilbronn on the Neckar, 1804.

There we find on page 326:

Prayer for the Jews. Almighty, eternal God, I pray to you for the welfare of a dispersed nation which more than once suffered from op

and fatigue.' 'Here are two sous.' 'With 50 centimes I could eat, with another 50 I could secure a lodging?' 'And then you will begin all over again?' He walks into the house. That was a Christian."

pression and contempt in past times. The misery of these unfortunate persons seemed to many to be a triumph of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and in order to make this triumph more glorious still, their wretchedness was aggravated, and every bud of civil and domestic happines of this industrious people destroyed. The religion of Jesus became odious to them because so many followers of it were their eternal and sworn enemies. Never shall such an unworthy and hostile denominational pride blind and corrupt my heart! Since I, O God, learned from Jesus that all men are brothers, I will respect in them the human nature and the human rights which they have in common with me; their misery and their civil humilation shall always inspire in me the eagerness to comfort them, to assuage their affliction, and to raise them again, by my sympathy with their fate, from the stunning blow of their past destruction. Amen.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"RITUAL MURDER".

I. How Christians came by the Superstition of "Ritual Murder".

In countries outside of Christendom, in the Persian empire, under the rule of the Arabs and the Osmans, even within the reach of power of the cruel tribes of the Berbers, the Jews never had the need to defend themselves against the suspicion of "Ritual Murder". There, too, they had to bear a hard fate, they were often subjected to persecutions, but this mare's nest was absolutely unknown in those countries.

In all "blood trials" which were carried through in the course of the centuries, by means of the most cruel tortures, against the Jews, it was always Christians who were the accusers.

Turks, Christians, and Jews live in Damascus, but the Turks never thought that the Jews thirsted for their blood. But the Christian monks in the convent there once complained of the Jews having slaughtered one of them, Father Thomas, for Passover.

And the Christians of all people ought to have remembered that the early Christian congregations had to suffer the most bloody persecutions on account of these accusations invented by pagans. The Christian massacres in the second half of the 4th century were based on the charge that those hundred thousands of slaughtered Christians had seized children, sprinkled