LXI.

DISRAELI’S DEFENCE OF THE JEWS

DISRAELI supported the emancipation of the Jews in England on religious grounds:――

“... The very reason for admitting the Jews is because they show so near an affinity to you. Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?... The Jew was necessarily a religious being, but not a proselytising one, and so would support and not undermine the Christian Church.... What possible object can the Jew have to oppose the Christian Church? Is it not the first business of the Christian Church to make the population whose minds she attempts to form, and whose morals she seeks to guide, acquainted with the history of the Jews? Has not the Church of Christ――the Christian Church, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant――made the history of the Jews the most celebrated history of the world? On every sacred day you read to the people the exploits of Jewish heroes, the proofs of Jewish devotion, the brilliant annals of past Jewish magnificence.... Every Sunday――every Lord’s day――if you wish to express feelings of praise and thanksgiving to the most High, or if you wish to find expressions of solace in grief, you find both in the works of Jewish poets.... In exact proportion to your faith ought to be your wish to do this great act of national justice. If you have not forgotten what you owe to this people, if you were grateful for that literature which, for thousands of years, has brought so much instruction and so much consolation to the sons of men, you as Christians, would be only too ready to seize the first opportunity of meeting the claims of those who profess this religion.”¹

¹ The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, by William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle. Volume iii. ... London ... 1914, _pp._ 68‒69.