LL of the persecution, all of the atrocities and inhumanities, all the savagery and torture, all of the wars of the world, can be traced to the one word "tolerance”—or, rather, the lack of it. Tolerance is true Christian charity. It is, to my mind, the one big word in humanity.

Tolerance is benevolence, good-will.

Few, very few people are truly tolerant. You mean to be tolerant, and you think you are; but this very fact renders your situation all the more serious. You are self-satisfied, and this is self-deception. In this innocent manner you go about fanning flames.

Tolerance is the modern method of making men bow to King Reason. It is a consideration of others that commands respect and confidence. Tolerance teaches you to fraternize, to sympathize, and to do as you would be done by.

Tolerance is evidence of the very best intentions.

You may not always agree with me and with my methods of reasoning, but you can at least be charitable, tolerant, big.

Not long ago I stood on the deck of a coast-line steamer, and watched the great river in the ocean-the Gulf Stream. The captain of the boat directed our course close to the edge of this inter-ocean Amazon, and while watching this curious phenomenon of the physical world, my mind nat urally reverted to its moral counterpart in what we ca

the Christian world. The surface of old ocean, shown in all its glittering moonlight silver, brought my mind more closely to the great Gulf Stream that seems to separate one race from another.

But before I go further I would respectfully request my readers to be tolerant, and to bear in mind that what is said here is not said with the idea of criticizing any creed, of changing or of favoring any particular religion. For remember, I am tolerant. Your views of religion are your own personal rights, and I shall always respect them. It is not my object to antagonize. I shall try to tell, briefly, the story of the Jew-tell a chapter or two of suffering, romance, horror, without the words. I shall leave the lines largely to your own understanding, and to your higher sense of human justice and tolerance.

For ages and for ages we find the Jew compelled to give up children, wife, country, goods, gold, home, and even life. And during all this infernal wrath, covering centuries, we find him faithful, devoted, constant to his principles; and if these are virtues, then indeed we should admire the Jew.

From the very central chamber of God's administration door, down to the present time, the world has dealt with the Jew.

Although the Jews have been scattered over the face of the earth for eighteen hundred years, their distinct features, their personal peculiarities, their strange customs, still remain the same. This is pretty strong proof of their perma

nence.

Though as a nation they have been dead for centuries, they still live as they originally lived; and in all the history of man, I can find no place where humans have been so generally persecuted, rejected for their character and customs, and accepted as a religious first principle. Many people affect to despise the Jew, but accept God.

The Jews have struggled for their existence against the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Syrians and Romans; have been conquered and nearly exterminated by each of these powers, and have survived them all.

They have been oppressed and persecuted by emperors

and republics, by sultans and by popes, by Moors and by inquisitors; they were proscribed in Catholic Spain, Protestant Norway and Greek Muscovy, while their persecutors sang the hymns of their psalmody, revered their books, believed in their prophets, and even persecuted them in the name of God.

I must leave behind the blood-stained record of their great siege, illustrated by their splendid but unavailing courage; of their final destruction, with all its incredible horrors; of their exile and slavery; of their dispersion in all lands and kingdoms; of their persecutions, sufferings, wanderings and despair.

It is a story that puts to shame not only our Christianity, but our common humanity. It staggers belief to be told that such a thing could be done not only by blinded heathen and ferocious pagan, but by Christian people, and in the name of Him, the meek and lowly, who was called the Prince of Peace. Still it is an instructive story; it seems to mark, in colors never to be forgotten, both the wickedness and the folly of intolerance.

The Jews give liberally to the Gentile charities, and ask nothing in return. They stand by one another in a commercial crisis. They average in education far ahead of the races that surround them, and in this country you seldom, if ever, see an adult Jew who cannot compute figures and read and write.

They marry within themselves entirely, and yet, in defiance of well-known natural laws with regard to breeding, their race does not degenerate. With them, family government is perhaps more supreme than with any other people. Divorce, domestic discord, and disobedience to parents are almost unknown among them.

The Jew, from long, long ago, from the very beginning, dwelt everywhere in fear and trembling. Since we, as a nation, have removed this cause of fear, we find the Jew with the same permanent attachment to the soil as that of our own people.

A prominent writer says: "The impression is sought to be made that the Jew is dishonest in his dealings with the Gentiles, insincere in his professions, servile to his su

habits and manner. That the Jew-meaning the class—is dishonest I believe to be an atrocious calumny; and, considering that we derive all our notions of rectitude from the Jew who first taught the world those commands, 'Thou shalt not steal' and 'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' we pay ourselves a shabby compliment in thus befouling our teachers. Undoubtedly there are Jewish scoundrels in great abundance; undoubtedly also there are Gentile scoundrels in great abundance."

History reveals no record of a more enlightened jurisprudence than that of the Jews. The most remarkable code in criminal practice, from antiquity to now, is the record of the Jew. They were a peaceful people, and are today. They had no standing army, no common defense, but trusted to the patriotism of their people.

The Jew has always had a terrible and unflagging denunciation for all forms of idolatry. To him it was treason. But their institutions interest mankind more, perhaps, than their beliefs: their forms of organic law, legislation, education, and the greatest institution in the world—the home.

The days of hanging mothers to gibbets and tying their daughters around their necks to see them expire together; ripping up women with child, taking the half-formed infant from the womb, and throwing it to swine; putting a dagger into the hands of prisoners, and forcing them to plunge it into the breast of a father, a mother, a wife, or a child, thereby hoping to make them guilty of parricide, and forever damn their souls while they destroyed their bodiesI say, the days of this delirium, that bathed whole countries in blood, are the illustrations of the lack of tolerance.

I pay all due respect to the doctrines of the Church, or of any church or denomination, or of any religious belief. What I have said here has only the interest of the world at heart. Therefore, every impartial reader should grant me the privilege of trying to tell the truth with reference to the terrible crimes that are bound to follow intolerance.

What an absurd idea for man, who is but a little over five feet high, to stand on this little globe which rolls together with many other globes, where nine hundred mil

228

lions more men stand, and say to the world: You must believe as I do, or I will hold the rest of you in horror; you will be eternally wretched!

Imagine yourself with me in that great moment when all men are to receive their judgment. On the left you will find Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Washington, Lincoln, McKinley-the priest, the preacher, the rabbi.

Do you think for one moment that my mind is warped because my dear mother was a Methodist? Do you think for one instant that I cannot see good, more than good, in the Knights of Columbus, on my way to the Masonic temple?

O, you poor, imperceptible individual, lost in immensity! What right have you to establish the throne of judgment?

The All-Wise has given us hands to help and not hearts to hate-given us, in this transitory life, minds to understand the trifling differences in garments, in thoughts, in imperfect laws, in idle opinion and in our several situations and conditions that appear so disproportionate in our own eyes, but are equal in His.

Between those who worship by the light of tapers at noonday, and those who content themselves with the light of a glorious planet in the midst of the heavens, I can see no difference. For those who dress themselves in long cloaks of black wool, or in robes of white linen, there is no preference in my mind.

Whether you own a small parcel of that great heap of dirt called the world, or whether you possess a few round, yellow fragments of a precious metal, you are to my mind

a member of the brotherhood of man.

ᄆ

JOLTS

WHEN some men talk you can tell what their wives are thinking about.

Once elected to office and it usually settles a good man for wanting to work in the future.

They say still waters run deep. I have taken one or two deep dives, and I find at the bottom of a deep river there is the most mud.