Page:Forging of Passion Into Power.djvu/20

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16
Preface

brilliant boy was terribly tempted for some years to make a profession of Christianity in order to open up for himself a possibility of entering some university. But by the age of twenty he had finally taken his resolution; to use his own expression, he had decided that "there was life in the old ship yet." He came to the conclusion that the best Christianity for a Jew is to conduct himself and his ritual so that Jesus Christ, if He were on earth, might worship beside him with satisfaction. Never were more significant words uttered in London than when David Marks said to his congregation at Berkeley Street: "If the Founder of Christianity came back to earth, where would He be to-day? In church? No, but here with us, repeating the Shemang Israel as a good Jew should, and as He did when on earth."

On his ninetieth birthday David Marks received congratulations and thanks from Jews all over the world for having pioneered the way for Israel from slavery and superstition towards culture and progress.

But the reformer, in his anxiety to purify the old Hebrew ritual from superstitious and misleading accretions, left out several elements of overwhelming importance to our knowledge of the methods of culture in use in the Sacred Past where men were trained in the science of prophecy. These elements have mercifully been preserved for us by old-fashioned Jews in Russia and Poland and the Ghetto quarters of East London:— "This strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust."

Lucy Everest Boole.—Never at any college. Learned chemistry in order to qualify to act as dispenser or shop assistant in pharmacy. Became Fellow of the