Knowing this, however, he supposes himself to know the worst. He has heard little of the excessive optimism of the Jew, the [Greek: παντα καλα λιαν: panta kala lian], so strongly opposed to Christianity, the “religion of sorrow.” He knows nothing of the immense passions and pugnacity, the eagerness and tenacity of Lutheran rancour displayed against all who differ from some minutiæ of oral law. He ignores the over-weening, narrow-minded pride of caste which makes the Jew “destined by God to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”--as one of their own race, Rabbi Ascher (initiator of youth), even now repeats.[17] He cannot realize the fact that the ferocity and terrible destructiveness which characterize the Jew and his literature, from the days of the Prophets to those of the Talmudists, are present in his civilized neighbour, whom he considers to be one of the best of men--a sleeping lion, it is true, but ready to awake upon the first occasion. And he is ignorant of the Eastern Jews’ love of mysticism and symbolism, their various horrible and disgusting superstitions, and their devotion to magical charms and occult arts which lead to a variety of abominations. This ignorance produces weak outbursts of lamentations that the Hebrews “still cling with obstinate persistence to a hopeless hope,” Hence we read in the pages of a modern traveller--_The Rob Roy on the Jordan_, p. 274, by J. MacGregor, M.A. (London: Murray, 1869): “Here, as well as some twenty years ago, I heard men in Palestine call their fellows ‘Jew’ as the lowest of all possible words of abuse. When we recollect that the Jews, in this very land of their own, were once the choice people of the world; that now through the whole earth, among the richest, the bravest, the cleverest, the fairest, the best at music and song, at poetry and painting, at art and science and literature, at education, philanthropy, statesmanship, war, commerce, and finance, in every sphere of life are Jews,--we may well remember the word of prophecy which told us long ago that the name of Jew would be a ‘byword and a reproach,’ even in the Jews’ own land.” It is true that, even in the Portuguese colonies, where the Jew is comparatively unknown, his name is worse than at Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Damascus; whilst “Judear”--to play the Jew--signifies the being capable of any villainy. But how long will prophecy prove true? In the coast towns of Morocco, a few years have sufficed to raise the Hebrew from the lowest of stations to equality with, and even superiority over, his Mussulman cousin. The Jew may ere long make the Gentile a “byword and a reproach.”