he despicable role of an accuser of his former
coreligionists and betrayer of their faith. The modern Jew also, though he
sympathizes with every liberal movement among men and respects every
honest opinion, however radically different from his own, cannot but
behold in the attitude of him who deserts the small yet heroic band of
defenders of his ancient faith and joins the great and powerful majority
around him, a disloyalty and weakness of character unworthy of a son of
Abraham, the faithful. Since the beginning of the new era in the time of
Mendelssohn, apostasy has made great inroads upon the numerical and
intellectual strength of Judaism, especially among the upper classes. It
is no longer, however, of an aggressive character, but rather a result of
the lack of Jewish self-respect and religious sentiment, against which
measures tending to a revival of the Jewish spirit are being taken more
and more. The Jews are called by the rabbis "the faithful sons of the
faithful." The apostate must be made to feel that he is of a lower type,
since he has become a deserter from the army of the battlers for the Lord,
the Only One God of Israel.

Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-Religions Of
Judaism

1. "It shall come to pass on that day that living waters shall go out from
Jerusalem; half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the
western sea.... And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day
shall the Lord be One, and His name one."(1377) These prophetic words of
Zechariah may be applied to the two great world-religions which emanated
from Judaism and won fully half of the human race, as it exists at
present, for the God of Abraham. Though they have incorporated many
non-Jewish elements in their systems, they have spread the fundamental
truths of the Jewish faith and Jewish ethics to every part of the earth.
Christianity in the West and Islam in the East have aided in leading
mankind ever nearer to the pure monotheistic truth. Consciously or
unconsciously, both found their guiding motive in the Messianic hope of
the prophets of Israel and based their moral systems on the ethics of the
Hebrew Scriptures. The leading spirits of Judaism recognized this,
declaring both the Christian and Mohammedan religions to be agencies of
Divine Providence, intrusted with the historical mission of cooeperating in
the building up of the Messianic Kingdom, thus preparing for the ultimate