C URRENT LITERATURE.
LIBERAL JUDAISM.
Liberal Judaism. By Claude G. Montefiore. (Macmillan and Co. 3s. net.)—" We have to remember," writes Mr. Claude- Montefiore, "that Judaism as a living religion is not contained in any book or expressed in any document, but that it is the religion professed by Jews, just as Christianity is the religion pro. essed by Christians, and as there are many forms of Christianity so there. are many forms of Judaism." The particular form of Judaism with which he deals is Liberal Judaism, and bears, as far as we understand, the same relation to strict orthodoxy among Jews that Broad Churchism does to strict orthodoxy among Christians. The book is written in the hope that it may render spiritual service to "many persons who do not quite know what they believe or disbelieve. They are uncertain whether or how far they are still Jews. They are doubtful whether there can still be phases of Judaism answering to their religious needs and consistent with their religious opinions so far as those opinions are articulately known to themselves." The book, how- ever, does not appeal by any means exclusively to Jews. It may be read with pleasure and profit by those who hold to any form of liberal religion. Mr. Montefiore does not keep to the letter of the Mosaic law. This is his view of the inspiration of Scripture : "The highest commands of the Bible are divine because they are- very good ; they are not [so most of us now think] very good because they are divine." To the Liberal Jew, according to this writer, "the moral law is not and cannot be contained in a book ; it is an ideal which is progressively interpreted." With the New Testament this new interpreter of Judaism deals in a truly liberal spirit. He urges his co-religionists to rid themselves of ignorant prejudice, and to read attentively a book "which the most different sorts of people in every age—believers and unbelievers alike— have agreed in thinking the greatest and most beautiful of all, religious books." To the Gentile reader Mr. Montefiore seems to, teach simply Unitarianism, but he implores his Jewish readers not to leave the religion in which they were born and to join Gentile Theistic Churches. The Jew has still, he believes, a religious message and a religious mission. Though he finds diffi- culties in his ancient faith, he should not seek peace in a new religion, but develop what he has. "Let him purify and expand it,
but do not let him allow (so far as he is concerned) a religions
martyrdom of centuries to end in impotence and futility."
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