reciting the Shema each morning
in the house of God, renewed daily his zeal and faith, by which he was
encouraged to sacrifice himself for his sacred heritage.

8. But the cultivation of the Torah, obligatory upon every Jew, effected
more even than the preservation of monotheism. Alongside of the Church,
which did its best to suppress free thought, Islam provided a culture
which encouraged study and investigation, and this brought the leading
spirits in Judaism to a profounder grasp of their own literary treasures.
Bold truth-seekers arose under the Mohammedan sway who had the courage to
break the chains of belief in the letter of the Scripture, and to claim
the right of the human reason to give an opinion on the highest questions
of religion. The leading authorities of the Synagogue followed a different
course from that of the Church, which had brought the Deity into the
sphere of the senses, divided the one God into three persons, and induced
the people to worship the image of Mary and her God-child rather than God
the Father. They insisted on the absolute unity and spirituality of God,
eliminated all the human attributes ascribed to Him in Scripture, and
strove to attain the loftiest and purest possible conception of His being.
It took a mighty effort for the people of the Law to reexamine the entire
mass of tradition in order to harmonize philosophy and religion, and
invest the divine revelation with the highest spiritual character. This
mental activity exerted a great influence upon the whole course of thought
of subsequent centuries and even upon modern philosophy. Again Israel
became conscious of his mission of light. Jewish thinkers, often combining
rabbi, physician, and astronomer in one person, carried the torch of
science and free investigation, directly or indirectly, into the cell of
many a Christian monk, rousing the dull spirit of the Middle Ages and
bringing new intellectual nurture to the Church, else she might have
starved in her mental poverty.

The Jews of Spain became the teachers of Christian Europe. The forerunners
of the Protestant Reformation sat at the feet of Jewish masters. Jewish
students of the Hebrew language, scientifically trained, opened up the
simple meaning of the Scriptural word, so long hidden by traditional
interpretation. The Lutheran and the English translations of the Bible
were due to their efforts, and thus also the rise of Protestantism, which
inaugurated the modern era. Yet