so religiously did the Jewish
people observe it that it continues a characteristic ordinance of Judaism
to this day. The study of the law became henceforth their one vocation,
and the synagogue was instituted both to instruct them in it and to
remind them of the purpose of their separate existence among the nations
of the earth. High as the Temple and its service still stood in the
esteem of every Jew, from the period of the Captivity it began to be felt
of secondary importance to the synagogue and its service. With the
erection and extension of the latter the people were being slowly trained
into a truer sense of the nature of religious worship, and gradually made
to feel that to know the will of God and do it was a more genuine act of
homage to Him than the offering of sacrifices upon an altar or the
observance of any religious rite. Under such training the issue between
the Jew and the Samaritan became of less and less consequence, and he and
not the Samaritan was on the pathway which led direct to the final
worship of God in spirit and in truth (John iv. 22).

SYNAGOGUE, THE GREAT, the name given to a council at Jerusalem,
consisting of 120 members, there assembled about the year 410 B.C. to
give final form to the service and worship of the Jewish Church. A Jewish
tradition says Moses received the law from Sinai; he transmitted it to
Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, to the men of
the Great Assembly, who added thereto these words: "Be circumspect in
judgment, make many disciples, and set a hedge about the law." To them
belong the final settlement and arrangement of the Jewish Scriptures, the
introduction of a new alphabet, the regulation of the synagogue worship,
and the adoption of sundry liturgical forms, as well as the establishment
of the FEAST OF PURIM (q. v.), and probably the "schools" of the
Scribes.

SYNCRETISM, name given to an attempted blending of different, more
or less antagonist, speculative or religious systems into one, such as
Catholic and Protestant or Lutheran and Reformed.

SYNDICATE, in commercial parlance is a name given to a number of
capitalists associated together for the purpose of carrying through some
important business scheme, usually having in view the controlling and
raising of prices by means of a monopoly or "corner."

SYNERGISM, the theological doctrine that divine grace requires a
correspondent action of the human will to render it effective, a d