ews have no desire to forsake
their European palaces, and go to live in Jerusalem. But in a return
from exile, in the restoration of a people, the question is not whether
certain rich men will choose to remain behind, but whether there will be
found worthy men who will choose to lead the return. Plenty of
prosperous Jews remained in Babylon when Ezra marshalled his band of
forty thousand and began a new glorious epoch in the history of his
race, making the preparation for that epoch in the history of the world
which has been held glorious enough to be dated from for evermore. The
hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an adequate community of
feeling as well as widespread need in the Jewish race, and the hope that
among its finer specimens there may arise some men of instruction and
ardent public spirit, some new Ezras, some modern Maccabees, who will
know how to use all favouring outward conditions, how to triumph by
heroic example, over the indifference of their fellows and the scorn of
their foes, and will steadfastly set their faces towards making their
people once more one among the nations.

Formerly, evangelical orthodoxy was prone to dwell on the fulfilment of
prophecy in the "restoration of the Jews," Such interpretation of the
prophets is less in vogue now. The dominant mode is to insist on a
Christianity that disowns its origin, that is not a substantial growth
having a genealogy, but is a vaporous reflex of modern notions. The
Christ of Matthew had the heart of a Jew--"Go ye first to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel." The Apostle of the Gentiles had the heart
of a Jew: "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; to whom
pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the
giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are
the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came." Modern
apostles, extolling Christianity, are found using a different tone: they
prefer the mediaeval cry translated into modern phrase. But the
mediaeval cry too was in substance very ancient--more ancient than the
days of Augustus. Pagans in successive ages said, "These people are
unlike us, and refuse to be made like us: let us punish them." The Jews
were steadfast in their separateness, and through that separateness
Christianity was born. A modern book on Liberty has maintained that from
the free