This
lies in the intense indestructible nationality of the race. Eighteen
centuries have passed since they became a people, "scattered and peeled,"
their "holy and beautiful house" a ruin, their capital a desolation,
their land proscribed to the exile's foot. During these centuries deluge
after deluge of so-called barbarians has swept over Asia and Europe: Hun
and Tartar, Alan and Goth, Suev and Vandal,--we attach certain vague
meanings to the names, but can the most learned scholar identify one
individual of the true unmingled blood? All have disappeared, merged in
the race they overran, in the kingdoms they conquered and devastated. The
Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed,
persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined,
as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and
beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative
nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism,
"God is _one_." Be He the incarnation of pitiless vengeance, hardening
Pharaoh's heart that He may execute sevenfold wrath on him and his
people; be He the Good Shepherd, who "gathers the lambs in His arms," and
for their sakes "tempers His rough wind in the day of His east wind;"--to
the Jew He has been and is, "I am the Lord; that is My name; and My glory
will I not give to another.
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