“After having traced to the Christian states their duties and their interests in regard to the amelioration of the condition of the Jews of Europe, we may prophesy what will happen in case they ignore this counsel.... If the Turks have a little common sense they will try and attract the Jews to them in order to make them their political, military and financial advisers, their police agents, their merchants, in short to become initiated by their advisers into all wherein lies the strength and weakness of the Christian states. Finally, the Sultan will sell to them the Kingdom of _Judah_, where they would act better than aforetimes.... The Jews who would have found again their country would be compelled to make therein flourish the arts, industry, agriculture and the commerce of Europe. _Jerusalem_, a horrible nest at present (this was written in 1797), giving a heartache to the pilgrims who come there now, would become a splendid capital. They would rebuild the Temple of _Solomon_ upon its ruins. They would fix the waters of the torrents of _Kidron_, which would supply canals for circulation and exportation.” CHAPTER XVII. THE ZIONIST IDEA IN ENGLAND The spirit of the time――Different currents――Thomas Witherby ――Dr. Joseph Priestley――Anti-Socinus, _alias_ Anselm Bayly ――John Hadley Swain――William Whiston――Bishop Robert Lowth ――Dr. Philip Doddridge――David Levi. IN the early years of the nineteenth century religious ideas exercised considerable influence on the English mind, and penetrated deeply into the soul of the nation. Public opinion was, therefore, favourably disposed towards Zionism, and prepared to accept it from the religious point of view. But that was not the only point of view from which Zionism was advocated and accepted. Zionism had two aspects, corresponding to the two meanings expressed by the words “Restoration of _Israel_.” Those words sometimes denoted simply the tendency towards a Jewish national revival, an aspiration as elementary and natural as any other of the kind; at other times the idea of the “Restoration of _Israel_” was connected with the realization of religious prophecies, and it was held that Judaism or Christianity (according to the point of view) was to be glorified by the resettlement of Jews in Palestine. As religion, and especially the Bible, was one of the most potent agencies in the formation of political and moral theories in England, it came about that the history of the Zionist idea was interwoven with that of religious opinions. But, on the other hand, it is impossible to overlook the influence of nationalist ideas which supported the Zionist cause from another point of view, and were expressed in a different tone and spirit. While on the one hand religious imagination gave to the conception the richness and warmth that belong to sentiment, ♦statesmanship contributed the clearness and firmness that reason alone can give.