The autonomy of congregation, which is a characteristic feature of new Jewish settlements, and which remained permanently in a country where there are no general laws about religion and no special relations with the government to force on the Jews official representatives, was also favorable to the spread of Reform. Still, the first attempt which was made in Charleston, S. C., in 1824, to imitate the Reform movement of Germany was a failure. The “Reformed Society of Israelites,” which was established there in that year by twelve former members of the Congregation Bet Elohim, who left the latter religious body because a memorial for the reformation of the ritual was rejected by the vestry without discussion, had but a brief existence. But Charleston was losing its comparative importance and was attracting less Jewish immigration than the northern seaport communities. So there was a continual drifting away into indifference, and when a new synagogue was built to replace the one which was destroyed by the great conflagration of 1838, the petition of thirty-eight members that an organ be placed in the new structure, was granted. There was again a split in the congregation, which did not become united until it was greatly reduced by the ravages of the Civil War. It was the rabbi of the Charleston congregation (Gustav Poznanski), a man imbued with the spirit of the Reform Temple of Hamburg, who decided, as an authority on Jewish matters, that an organ in the synagogue was permissible according to religious law. This is typical of numerous later cases in which an autonomous congregation, subject to no other religious authority and not connected with any other religious body, accepted the authority of its own rabbi to modify its ritual and its religious practices in accordance with his personal views or inclinations. Several other “Reform Vereine” in the East and the Middle West had a more lasting success, because they obtained able and energetic leaders from among the young German scholars who came over at that time, and who were, so to speak, in duty bound to continue the spread of Reform in their new home. But curiously enough, and perhaps emblematic of the ultimate course of American Judaism, the first real and successful attempt to adjust Judaism to its surroundings in the United States was not made by an adherent of the Reform movement, but by its strongest and ablest opponent which this country has developed. Long before the new leaders of that movement arrived and began to spread their ideas and ideals in the German language, there arose a vigorous and diligent pioneer who introduced the English sermon in the American synagogue, who established the first influential Jewish periodical, a man whose strong intellect and organizing abilities left their impress on the Jewish community of the entire country――Rabbi Isaac Leeser. Illustration: Rabbi Isaac Leeser.