To Grace Aguilar, Moses was “the mouth of God” (that is her own phrase). There is nothing between a theory of verbal inspiration and the belief that Moses “invented” and “presumed on the ignorance and superstition of the rescued nation.” With a feminine love of italics she contends that “we _must_ believe God framed _every law_ mentioned in the Mosaic books or _none_.” How crude this sounds! On the one hand, it cuts off all thought of inspiration before Moses, on the other, all thought of it after the close of the scriptural canon. It would have seemed to her almost blasphemous to regard Hillel as animated with the same spirit of God that moved Haggai. She dismisses the “Oral Law” in an aside. “The Bible is the foundation of religion.” Miss Aguilar goes on to complain that English Bibles were not found in Jewish homes. But the explanation is easy. In those days it was impossible to find an acceptable English Bible for Jewish use. The Authorized Version was marred not only by Christological renderings, but also by the Christological insertions of the headings to the chapters. Before the publication of the Revised Version it had become possible to obtain an Anglican edition without the headings. But I doubt whether that was the case so early as 1842. Moreover, Jews have always been slow to acknowledge that the _Hebrew_ Bible was insufficient. There was much that is creditable in this reluctance to face facts; though there was also much that was dangerous. It is impossible to do justice in a brief article to the intense love of Judaism shown in Miss Aguilar’s book. She pleads for the religion with persuasive eloquence; it must appeal to the heart and the reason; it must permeate the home; it must regulate life. She would have family prayers daily. To this topic she returns over and over again. “The youthful members of a little domestic congregation would look back with warm emotion, in after years, to that period when, with their brothers and sisters, they thronged around their parents to listen to the word of God, and made known their common wants together.” But the thought that dominates her whole book is the perfect truth and sufficiency of Judaism. It only needs to be known to be preferred to every possible alternative. No Jew can ever become lukewarm if he understands his religion. But he must understand its spirit. “We know that they who depart from the faith of their fathers are ever those reared in the severest obedience to mere forms.” Whereupon Leeser in his note comments: “This is certainly a sweeping clause though there is a great deal of truth in it.” He adds that the fault “does not lie in the _forms_, but in the absence of _spiritual_ education.” That is clearly the reason why Miss Aguilar called her book “The Spirit of Judaism.” She was no foe to forms as such. She strongly defends the dietary laws, in the very chapter whence the last quotation was taken. _Obedience_ is the term writ large on every page; but so is _belief_.