a purified religion magnified itself in art and wisdom.  So will a new Judea, poised between East and West—­a covenant of reconciliation.  Will any say the prophetic vision of your race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of progress hag no message for Judaism—­it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to lay open—­the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken field?  I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.  The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose them.  The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the planting of the national ensign.  The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of corn.  Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or purpose of me?  That is the blasphemy of this time.  The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.  Let us contradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future of the world—­not renounce our higher gift and say, ’Let us be as if we were not among the populations;’ but choose our full heritage, claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the nations of the Gentiles.  The vision is there:  it will be fulfilled.”

These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism.  She read Hebrew with ease, and had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions.  The religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, she carefully studied.  The accuracy of her information has been pointed out by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost enthusiasm.  One of these, Prof.  David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an excellent notice of Daniel Deronda, bears testimony to the author’s learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures.  He says that, “led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish education is wont to exercise—­to prove by types that Judaism is an intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble, susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to appear in a glorious form.”  He also says of the author’s learning, that it is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always faithful and her characters true to nature.