What, then, is reform, this Jewish reform? It is pure, unadulterated monotheism. It believes that men, though they may expound religion, can not create it. It looks on the Talmud, as did Emanuel Deutsch, as the most poetical, the most confusing of chronicles, but utterly worthless for the guidance of any human being--a curiosity, patched over, embroidered, by a thousand different hands, something to be placed in a cabinet, to be gazed on, but as practically useless for human instruction as would be the Arthurian romances. Yahya ibn Main was a worshiper of the Prophet, and labored all his life to purify the text of his Koran, and thus he is recorded to have said: "I wrote down numbers of traditions under the dictation of liars, and made use of the paper for heating my ovens. I thus obtained at least one advantage--my bread was well baked." One saying in the Talmud is applicable to it: "They dived into the ocean and brought up a potsherd." Oh, the _olla-podrida_ of nonsense in it! And still it shapes the lives of millions of Jews; it warps their ways, for it is almost their only book. The Reformer is no iconoclast, he is educated enough not to wish to destroy this relic of a past, but he is striving to expunge it, to deprive the Talmud from exerting its baleful influence. The reformed Jew believes in a God of mercy--one of love. He thinks that his Creator is not a vengeful being. He does not believe that Christ was the Son of God, doubts even a coming Messiah, but thinks that modern teachings have done for man's immortal soul what the older lawgivers did for grosser flesh and blood only. What the Reformer desires most especially is that he shall have readers, clergymen (call them what you please), who shall not only be familiar with the language they live in, but have the highest, the very highest education, be in fact the equals of those who preach to their Christian friends. These Reformers sicken over those attempts of crass ignorance which, through the borrowed sanctity of a salaried office, assume the direction of educated intelligence. The majority of these Reformers are utterly indifferent to dietary regulations. Can peace with God, a resurrection of the soul after the death of the body, entrance to heaven, have anything to do with the eating of a mollusk? Could the great Creator have made food for one man which another dare not eat? Trivialities, mixed up in religion, debase it, weaken it, sap it to its very vitals. A stronger, more hearty belief must emancipate itself from puerilities. A reformed Jew can not be a materialist, though he may strip religion of its symbolisms.