As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the children of Israel.  I shared more or less the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted race.  I used to read in my hymn-book,—­I hope I quote correctly,—­

       “See what a living stone
        The builders did refuse! 
        Yet God has built his church thereon,
        In spite of envious Jews.”

I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel.  Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan exclusiveness.  The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it:  one of the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, with the bones, of pilgrims scattered about them, and grinning at the travellers whom they could no longer devour.  In the nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy there was one religion in the world,—­one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable impositions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to perdition for so believing.  The Jews were the believers in one of these false religions.  It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and abominable lie.  The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of their race.

No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we found in our ill-favored and ill-flavored streets were apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race.  It was against the most adverse influences of legislation, of religious feeling, of social repugnance, that the great names of Jewish origin made themselves illustrious; that the philosophers, the musicians, the financiers, the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world to recognize and accept them.  Benjamin, the son of Isaac, a son of Israel, as his family name makes obvious, has shown how largely Jewish blood has been represented in the great men and women of modern days.

There are two virtues which Christians have found it very hard to exemplify in practice.  These are modesty and civility.  The Founder of the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a Messiah, a special ambassador from heaven, with an authoritative message.  They were intimately acquainted with every expression having reference to this divine messenger.  They had a religion of their own, about which Christianity agrees with Judaism in asserting that it was of divine origin.  It is a serious fact, to which we do not give all the attention it deserves, that this divinely instructed people were not satisfied with the evidence that the young Rabbi who came to overthrow their ancient church and found a new one was a supernatural being.  “We think he was a great Doctor,” said a Jewish companion with whom I was conversing.  He meant a great Teacher, I presume, though healing the sick was one of his special offices.  Instead