On the 28th September, 1791, the National Convention decreed the equality of the Israelites of France with their Christian fellow-citizens. The waves of the Revolution, however, overflowed the borders of France, and the agitation they caused was quickly communicated to all Germany. Wherever the armies of the Republic penetrated, the gates of the ghettos were thrown open, and in the name of Fraternity, Liberty and Equality were announced to their inhabitants. When Napoleonic misrule at last exasperated Germany into resistance, the seeds which French influence had sown had already taken firm root in the German soil. On the 11th March, 1812, Frederick William III. issued his famous edict, removing the main disabilities from which the Jews of his dominions had suffered, granting them the rights and imposing upon them the honorable duties of citizenship. They were no longer to be classed as foreigners. The state claimed them as its children, and exacted of them the same sacrifices as all its sons were called upon to bring in the troublous times that soon followed. With what eager alacrity the Jews responded to the king's call the records of the German wars for independence amply testify. On the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo they stood side by side with their Christian brethren. Many sons and fathers of Jewish households yielded their lives in the country's defence. In the blood of the fallen the new covenant of equal justice was sealed for all time to come. However prejudice might still dog their footsteps, however shamefully the government might violate its solemn pledges to the Jewish soldiers on their return from the wars, the Jews of Germany had now gained what they could no more lose. They felt that the land for which they had adventured their all, in whose behalf they had lost so much, was indeed their fatherland. For the first time, after many, many centuries, the fugitives had gained a home, a country. They awoke as from a long sleep. They found the world greatly changed around them; vast problems engaging the attention of thinkers, science and philosophy everywhere shedding new light upon the path of mankind. They were eager to approve themselves worthy and loyal citizens, eager to join in the general work of progress. They dwelt no more with anxious preference on the past. The present and the future demanded their exertions, and the motives that had so long compelled their exclusion from the fellowship of the Gentiles were gradually disappearing. As their religion was mainly retrospective in character and exclusive in tendency, great changes were needed to bring it into harmony with the altered condition of affairs. These changes were accordingly attempted, and their history is the history of Jewish Reform. III. REFORMED JUDAISM.