26 JUNE 1909, Page 9

THE SYNAGOGUE AND THE CHURCH.}

.TFira "Contribution to the Apologetics of Judaism" is an able book. Mr. Goodman, whether ho attacks or defends "and his tactics are mainly of the offensive kind—shows great Skill. He is a master of his subject, and we have no "'son to complain of his tone and temper. He hits bard, b11€ he hits fairly. There is much in what be says which a Christian may profitably lay to heart. The chief criticism which we would make on Mr. Goodman's Itrgnolent is that the Judaism which he sets forth is not the Judaism of the Old Testament. There is much that is generous and attractive in his chapter on the "Universality of iTndaism " ; but this faith is not the logical outcome of the Mosaic Law, and this law must be the ultimate basis of the religion. If it is not, we have to do with what may be described—we use the phrase with no intention of 1?ffence---;18 "a fancy religion." There is no little truth In the remark that while the Christian teacher seeks they bring his people back to the Book whose authority

recognise, the enlightened Jew seeks to escape from

The "prophets," says Mr. Goodman, "did not occupy themselves with Israel only, but with all the peoples of the earth known to them." He mentions Obadiah and Nahum as examples. But there is nothing either of these prophecies but "ailing denunciations of wrath. Nahum rejoices in the absolute ruin of Nineveh ; Obadiah exults over Edom. v kinship was no tie of affection to the Jew, witness the cc'," story which is told in Genesis xix. of the origin of oau uand Ammon. Was race-hatred ever carried further ?

411,1;14 Catholic Rneuctopeedia. Edited. by Charles G. Ilerbermann, LL.D., 'Per 1,0•11.?"' vols. I.-IV. London : Caxton Publishing Company. [27s. 6d.

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• m id Sony and the Church, By Paul Goodman. London i CL,Routledge ims,1

We have, of course, to regard the Jew as he was in his own land, not the cosmopolitan Jew as two thousand years and more of a wonderful history have made him. Or, to take another aspect of the same subject, let us suppose that Christianity had never existed, and that the dreams of a world-wide dominion which we find in the later Isaiah and elsewhere had been realised. Mr. Goodman sees in the Babylonian Captivity and the Roman capture of Jerusalem the efficient causes of the Universal Judaism. "Prayer superseded sacrifices." But is this the ideal of the Law or the Prophets ? There was "a place which the Lord Lath chosen to set his name there." Would any one of the Old Testament writers have looked with anything but horror on the time when this place should have lost its singular honour P Would. any of them have approved of the Baying that " wherever God was invoked, there was a temple, every table wherever people partook of food, and thanked the Lord for it, became an altar " ? This is " Universal " indeed, but it is not Judaism.