The San Antonio light. (San Antonio, Tex.) 1883-1886, 1883-08-01

"Falcon," the Lexington, Kentucky, cor
respondent Of the Cincinnati News Journal,
pays the following poetical tribute to the
Jews
"The Jews are a distinct nation, with Lam
guage and literature all their own, and be-
lieve distinct and special understanding Of
both; with a special insight into the purpose
OF their organic national life and a special
comprehension of the meaning Of their
strangely significant existence. Mysticism
reves in every line of every letter In their
alphabet, and Christianity plants itself upon
the promises in their sacred books; the laws
before which their enemies bow in reverence
were laid up in the ark, and the orator and
the poet draw inspiration and metaphor from
the crowned psalmist Of Mount Zion and the
long suffering patriarch Of Uz. The foot
steps have sanctifed the desert
waste and made holy the waters
Of the Red Sea. BY the magic OF their genius
they have made Metaphor abandon the river
Styx and the Elysian fields to lead the swift
rolling Jordan past the olden walls of a new
Jerusalem. Poetry is the handmaiden of their
history-the brook Kedron tinkles on down
through the cycling ages, and the dews Of
Hermon will descend to refresh the bruised
heart until time shall be no more. The
painter has made canvas glow with the
majesty Of Daniel and the lovliness Of
Jephtha's daughter, and the composer has
fed the hungry souls Of grand organ pipes
with the song Of Miriam as her clashing
trimbrels mingled with the soughing of the
angry sea waves. Behind the despissd Jew
of to-day is the burning bush of Horeb and
the lightning girdled Sinai the journeys Of his
progenitors were marked with cloud and FIRE;
he is the child OF Kings, the kinsman Of
Messiah; the taste Of Heavenly mama is in
his heart, and his blood runs red with the
juice from grapes Of Eschol.
With such magnificent past | do not see
how he can content himself with barren
present. The sword of Gideon and the
scepter OF Solomon are behind him +; even the
temple Of his God was built by the servile
labor Of strangers, for no Israelite laid a stone
VI nllSu W iOOu iOi
him in the world Of intellectual life. The ma
terial kingdom of his fathers is no more, but
the scepter need not depart from Israel, for
he may rule in the domain Of spiritual and re-
ligious thought. Religious history in his in
heritance, ethical speculation in his vineyard
with the Talmud for his textbook and the
Targums for his teachers, he can enter in and
take possession of a wilderness of thought
and information which the Christian world
can only survey from afar off and meas
ure by surmise and conjecture. lie owes it
to himself he owes it to the world, that he
should be light bringer that he should dis
pense the light of truth, for truth is above all
things, whether it be given al the hand of Jew
or Gentle. Let him not dwarf himself be.
hind the counter, but possess the world.
Emanuel Deutsch discovered and pronounced
the ineffable name; he was smitten with fail
ure, and died in agony; but the literary lrag-
ments which he left, like the fragments OF
Cyclopean stones, are greater than the finished
temples of other architects. What he would
have done some other son OF Abraha.n can
do, and the world demands that he shall do it.
1t would not be amiss for the coming Council
to institute search for the man."