THE JEWS IN WORLD HISTORY [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] quite agree with Mr. Alan Porter that a sensible English Jew ought to be as other Englishmen, in everything except his religious creed—he seems to grudge the exception— but where I cannot agree to his demands, made rather de haul en bas, is where he calls on the Jew to believe in the Incarna- tion, or be lost for ever. Surely it is possible, without any minute theological argumentation, which is always fruitless, to allow that a certain school of belief is entitled to refuse to regard Jesus as anything but a splendid young Rabbi, who brought to a system the precepts of Love less cardinally taught by earlier rabbis, and the worship of whom as God, preached by His devoted sectaries precisely at the right moment from a worldly standpoint, successfully spread a species of Judaism over half the world. We think that the species of Judaism in question was theologically wrong, and only beg leave to hold to our own far simpler creed. Are we, there- fore, not to be permitted the respect which nowadays one school of religious thought entertains for another which is not obviously immoral or degrading ?
Mr. Porter asks us, somewhat pontifically, to take steps, the only steps, to find contentment and a new racial purpose. We have contentment—i.e., in a religious sense—and, Zionists excepted, we desire no racial purpose but the old one of being witnesses to what we regard as the truth. We do not " blench " because others hold to their view of the truth, in which they have been brought up.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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