e vocation of a preacher by the
stress of circumstances is unjust. At that juncture he probably would
have chosen it, if he had been offered the rectorship of the Berlin
university; for, he was animated by somewhat of the spirit that urged
the prophets of old to proclaim and fulfil their mission in the midst of
storms and in despite of threatening dangers.

Zunz's sermons delivered from 1820 to 1822 in the first German reform
temple are truly instinct with the prophetic spirit. The breath of a
mighty enthusiasm rises from the yellowed pages. Every word testifies
that they were indited by a writer of puissant individuality, disengaged
from the shackles of conventional homiletics, and boldly striking out on
untrodden paths. In the Jewish Berlin of the day, a rationalistic,
half-cultured generation, swaying irresolutely between Mendelssohn and
Schleiermacher, these new notes awoke sympathetic echoes. But scarcely
had the music of his voice become familiar, when it was hushed. In 1823,
a royal cabinet order prohibited the holding of the Jewish service in
German, as well as every other innovation in the ritual, and so German
sermons ceased in the synagogue. Zunz, who had spoken like Moses, now
held his peace like Aaron, in modesty and humility, yielding to the
inevitable without rancor or repining, always loyal to the exalted ideal
which inspired him under the most depressing circumstances. He dedicated
his sermons, delivered at a time of religious enthusiasm, to "youth at
the crossroads," whom he had in mind throughout, in the hope that they
might "be found worthy to lead back to the Lord hearts, which, through
deception or by reason of stubbornness, have fallen away from Him."

The rescue of the young was his ideal. At the very beginning of his
career he recognized that the old were beyond redemption, and that, if
response and confidence were to be won from the young, the expounding of
the new Judaism was work, not for the pulpit, but for the professor's
chair. "Devotional exercises and balmy lotions for the soul" could not
heal their wounds. It was imperative to bring their latent strength into
play. Knowing this to be his pedagogic principle, we shall not go far
wrong, if we suppose that in the organization of the "Society for Jewish
Culture and Science" the initial step was taken by Leopold Zunz. In 1819
when the mobs of Wuerzburg, Hamburg, and Frankfort-on-the-Main revived
the "Hep, hep!" cry, three young men, Edward G