direct opposite of Judaism. Now the choice has been made; the old Israel has divided into Jews and Christians, and Judaism has lost the possibility of producing greatness The new Judaism has been unable to produce men like Samson and Joshua, the least Jewish of the old Jews. In the history of the world, Christendom and Jewry represent negation and affirmation. In old Israel there was the highest possibility of mankind, the possibility of Christ. The other possibility is the Jew.
I must guard against misconception; I do not mean that there was any approach to Christianity in Judaism; the one is the absolute negation of the other; the relation between the two is only that which exists between all pairs of direct opposites. Even more than in the case of piety and Judaism, Judaism and Christianity can best be contrasted by what each respectively excludes. Nothing is easier than to be Jewish, nothing so difficult as to be Christian. Judaism is the abyss over which Christianity is erected, and for that reason the Aryan dreads nothing so deeply as the Jew.
I am not disposed to believe, with Chamberlain, that the birth of the Saviour in Palestine was an accident. Christ was a Jew, precisely that He might overcome the Judaism within Him, for he who triumphs over the deepest doubt reaches the highest faith; he who has raised himself above the most desolate negation is most sure in his position of affirmation. Judaism was the peculiar, original sin of Christ; it was His victory over Judaism that made Him greater than Buddha or Confucius. Christ was the greatest man because He conquered the greatest enemy. Perhaps He was, and will remain, the only Jew to conquer Judaism. The first of the Jews to become wholly the Christ was also the last who made the transition. It may be, however, that there still lies in Judaism the possibility of producing a Christ, and that the founder of the next religion will pass through Jewry.
On no other supposition can we account for the long persistence of the Jewish race which has outlived so many other peoples. Without at least some vague hope, the Jews
