Jew and Gentile: A Sermon

There are about seven million Jews in existence in all the nations of the earth. They are living in almost every land under the sun. They excel all other people in being despised. There is not another race or people that is in such a sense a benefactor of the human race as they are, and have been. There is not another people under the sun that is treated so like despicable miscreants as they are, and have been. For two thousand years they have experienced hatred and contempt and persecution. They are an extraordinary race by their faults, by their virtues, and by their long experience. They have been twined in the history of every nation, oriental or occidental, ancient or modern; and yet they have never lost their race distinctions. They have mingled, but not mixed, with the nations which held them.

From the Hebrews the world has received a treasure of benefit such as no other people has ever conferred upon mankind; and those things in which we count ourselves most advanced, and which we boast as being blessings which we are conferring upon the nascent nations of our times, were derived as seed-corn from this notable people; and we are but raising harvests of that which they raised three thousand years ago.

“In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

That was promised to Abraham, and it has been fulfilled to the letter; for every civilized nation on the globe is to-day, if it would understand the source of its benefits, blessed in the descendants of Abraham. Those heroic people stand pre-eminent as the unrecognized benefactors of the human race. If any people ever lived whose faults might be condoned in consideration of their invaluable service to religion and to civilization, it is the Hebrews. If any people ever had a full measure of every form and degree of injustice meted out to them, it is the Hebrews.