The defenders of the bible have often pleaded that the wars of extermination in the bible had for their object the preservation of the chosen people from idolatrous associations. To keep pure the religion revealed from above it was necessary, it is argued, to kill and destroy the surrounding races and forbid the Jews under severe penalties from entering into close relations with them. But how does selling bad meat to the Gentiles help to preserve the purity of a religion? How does enslaving the stranger contribute to the same end? If it is association with the Gentile that is feared, why were the Jews permitted to buy slaves of them and live with them in the same house or field? And how does lending money upon usury to the stranger help to protect the divine religion from contamination? Candidly speaking, it is difficult to see how anybody with a touch of the spirit of love and humanity in his breast can believe in the Old Testament. The fall of the bastile did not mark the dawn of a better day for France more than the fall of the bible will for both Jews and Gentiles. One of the most hopeful signs of the day is that the cultivated Jew has completely broken away from the religion of his ancestors. The synagogues are even emptier than the churches. Of course, this has greatly alarmed the orthodox element. Recently the junior rabbi of the wealthiest New York synagogue, * in a sermon, on the first day of Passover, publicly attacked the Rationalists among the Jews, and held them responsible for the disrepute into which has fallen the religion of the bible: * Temple Emanuel. _The old tree that brought forth many beauteous blossoms is almost stripped of its foliage, and one by one the golden autumn leaves are falling as the older men and women of the congregation pass to their rest. There is no springtime here. It is the winter that is before us. For we have no youth, no young Jews and Jewesses to take the place of the elders. Let each family of the congregation ask itself where the young are, and the answer will be--not within the synagogue, but outside of it, indifferent to it; and faithless and disloyal to Judaism!_ Continuing his wail, the rabbi said: _Look among you! Your sons and your daughters, many of them, are marrying outside of their people. They are rearing their children with all modern accomplishments, but with no religion. Their homes are bare of piety and of the spirit of prayer. Some of them perhaps are engaged in charitable work, but the work of charity is a negative work at the best, and with our young men and women it is very seldom carried on in the spirit of Jewish brotherhood, but rather in a spirit of remote pity mingled with disdain. Are you satisfied with this result of your reform of Judaism?_