The depreciation of Mendelssohn was due to two opposite reasons. For some time, though most Jews were unconscious of it, it was becoming obvious that there were two, and only two, thorough-going solutions of the Jewish problem for the modern age. The one may be termed religious liberalism, the other territorial nationalism. Now, Mendelssohn’s views are in accord with neither of these tendencies. He was so far from being a territorialist--and I use that term in the widest sense--that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the father of assimilation. He was so remote from liberalism, that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the founder of neo-orthodoxy. His theory of life was that the emancipated Jew could and must go on obeying under the new environment the _whole_ of the olden Jewish law. This is not possible! cry both the liberal and the nationalist. Hence the liberal asserts one-half, the nationalist the other half of the Mendelssohnian theory. The liberal would modify the law, the nationalist would change the environment. In other words, instead of holding Mendelssohn in low esteem, both sides ought to recognize that they each derive half their inspiration from him. And it is fortunate that Jews are, at this juncture, coming to appreciate Mendelssohn all over again. Our German brethren have just initiated a capital series of little books which cost less than a shilling each. The first of these “Monuments of the Jewish Spirit” contains the _Jerusalem_, and much else of Mendelssohn’s work. Here one reads again the words first penned by the Berlin Socrates in 1783: Judaism knows nothing of a revealed religion, Israel possessed a divine legislation. “Thought is free,” we can hear Mendelssohn thundering--if so harsh a verb can be applied to so gentle a spirit--“let no Government interfere with men’s mode of conceiving God and truth.” State and religion are separated as wide as the poles. Israel has its own code, which in no way conflicts with the State; still less does Israel seek to impose that code on the State. Mendelssohn did not believe that all men were destined to attain to truth by the road of Judaism. “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable truths indispensable to salvation.” Hence, too, “Judaism has no articles of faith.” It follows that not unbelief was punished under the Jewish _régime_, but contumacious disobedience. The Jew was never commanded: believe this, disbelieve that; but do this, and leave that undone. Judaism is the Jew’s way of attaining goodness, other people can attain it in other ways. Not consonance but manifoldness is the design and end of Providence. “Religious union is not toleration, it is diametrically opposed to it.” Toleration consists rather in this: “Reward and punish no doctrine; hold out no allurement or bribe for the adoption of theological opinions.” How far in advance of his age Mendelssohn was! It took a full century after his _Jerusalem_ for England to abolish