Every solid body is threatened with disintegration; and the new powers of cohesion, if such there be, have scarcely come into play. But, of all changes fraught with momentous consequences, none could well be more important than that of a stripping off of its tribal gaberdine by Judaism, and the adoption of “a law fit for law universal.” The old fable is realized. The wind and hail of persecution blew and pelted the Jew for a thousand years, and he only drew his cloak closer around him. The sunshine of prosperity and sympathy has shone upon him, and, lo! his mantle is already dropping from his shoulders. For the present we can only treat the matter as a grand project, but we may endeavor to estimate the value of a Reformation of Judaism such as Luther accomplished for Christianity. In the first place, it is, I conceive, the sole chance for the permanent continuance of the Jewish religion that it should undergo some such regeneration. If the proposed Reform perish in the bud, Orthodox Judaism will doubtless survive for some generations, but, according to the laws which govern human institutions, its days must be numbered. In former times, when every nation in Europe held aloof from its neighbors in fear and jealousy, it was possible for alien tribes, like the Jews and gypsies, to move among all, holding rigidly to their own tribal alliances and observances; hated and mistrusted, indeed, but scarcely more so than their Christian next-door neighbors. But now that Christian nations are all blending together under the influence of perpetual intercourse, and their differences of belief, governments, costumes, habits, and ideas are effacing themselves year by year, the presence of a non-fusing, non-intermarrying, separatist race—a race brought by commerce into perpetual friction with all the rest—becomes an intolerable anomaly. For once Mr. Goldwin Smith was in the right in this controversy, when he remarked that “the _least_ sacred of all races would be that which should persistently refuse to come into the allegiance of humanity.”