The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-11-29
THE MIRACLE OF CENTURIES.
The Jews and Their Remarkable Place In n
Worlds History.

| The following striking passage oc-
ours in paper on "The Gathering of
Israel" read by Bishop Nicholson, of
Philadelphia, before the Prophetic Con-
ference:
Can the world show anything like
it? Twice 1900 years old, they saw the
proud Egyptian perish in the Redssea;
they heard the fall of great Babylon's
power; they witnessed the ruins of the
Syro- Macedonian conquests. And now
they have outlived the Caesars, and out
lived the dark ages. They have been
through all civilizations, shared in all
commissions, and have kept pace with
the entire progress of discovery and art.
And here they stand to-day, as distinct
as ever, occupying no country Of their
own, scattered through all countries,
identical in their immemorial physiog-
nomy, earth's men of destiny, before the
venerableness of whose pedigree the
proudest escutcheons of mankind are
but as trifes of yesterday. But have
they suffered severely? One convulsive
groan of agony breathing through eigh-
teen centuries, and heard in every land
but our own. At the siege of Jerusalem by
Titus, besides the tens of thousands led
into captivity, it was as if in a single ac
ton of great war the slain on one side
should amount to 100000, and when,
the remaining Jews having been ex-
PEELED from their country, they attempt
ed, sixty years afterward, to return, a
half million more were slaughtered. For
centuries they were forbidden, on pain
of death, even to set foot in Jerusalem.
Under King John of England, 1900
were massacred at York in one day.
Under Ferdinand and Isabella 100000,
by single decree, were forced out to
sea in boats, and the most of them per-
ished in the waves. They have been
fined and feeced by almost every Gov
eminent known to history. They have
been banished from place; banished and
recalled, and banished again. BY the
code of Justinian, they were incapable
of executing wills, of testifying in courts
of justice, of having social and public
worship. The Koran of Mohammed stig
matizes them as wild dogs; the Romish
church communicated any one who
held intercourse with Them the Greek
church uttered anathemas still more
severe. They have been forced to dis
semble to save their lives, and in Spain
and Portugal have even become Bishops,
and have governed in converts. In the
prophetic words of the Old Testament,
they have been "a reproach and pro-
verb, taunt and CURSE" they have
been "taken up in the lips of takers"
and have been "an infamy of the peo-
pie; ;" and the general estimate of them
has ripened into the intense contempt
of that dramatic conception-"S hylock,
the Jew of Venice" And now, in this
nineteenth century they are suffering
people stilb but still as indissoluble as
ever.
But now all this is not according to
the established course of nations. The
northern tribes came into Southern Eu-
rope, and are now not mt all distinguish
able. No Englishman can say that he
derives from the Britons and not from
the Romans, or from the Saxons and not
from the Normans. On the contrary,
the Jew is Jew still. Even our own
all-appropriating country, which de-
nationalizes Germans, Irish, French,
Spaniards, Firms, Swedes, has left I'M
touched this wondrous people. Here
they are are, holding fast to the one
tell-tale face, keeping up the sacred
learning of their traditions, self-con-
scious in their isolation, irrepressible in
their love of Jerusalem, sublime in their
singular patriotism, evermore looking
for their Messiah, the same intense indi-
viduality as when, lords of the soil, they
plucked His fruit from the trees of Ju-
dea. And, what is more, those world
wanderers of the centuries, these tribes
of the weary foot, have not only sur
vived, but have now risen again as an
element of power among mankind. The
Jew is the banker of the world; he is
among the foremost, whether in science,
or literature, or government. In witch
cry of song unsurpassed, he enchants
the world with some of the sweetest
music it ever heard. Surely he is the
standing miracle of the worlds current
history; the. bush of Moses, ever burn
ing, yet never consumed; an ocular
demonstration of how God may energize
the secret springs of a peoples life, yet
without disturbing individual freedom
or social characteristic an unanswerable
refutation of that goddess philosophy
which would turn the Almighty out of
His own universe.