among the peoples of the East and the West—­which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of transmission and understanding.  Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories....  The effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality.  That is the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the world.  What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with rivers?  Behold our people still!  Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled breast-plate.  Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device—­let them say, ’We will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.’  They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade.  And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena?  There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old—­a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom amidst the despotisms of the East.  Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishman or American.  And the world will gain as Israel gains.  For there will be a community in the van of the East which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West.  Difficulties?  I know there are difficulties.  But let the spirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the work will begin....