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“Jerusalem Section” and of the Executive of the Jews' Society, he considered, were fully acquainted with the more offensive details[1] of the Jerusalem troubles as they transpired from time to time, and that they so dealt with the business of the Jerusalem Section, that the Earl of Shaftesbury and the General Committee were not in a position to form a correct estimate of the magnitude of the scandals which were being enacted at Jerusalem. Such opinion is printed in the letter addressed by my father to the Daily News, and dated May 24, 1858.[2]
Personally, I entertained the conviction that the survivors of those whom I have named are not unacquainted with the sad details of the evidence which we have laid before the Committee. The selection of these officials and implicated persons to meet us, to the entire exclusion of independent Members of the Committee (some of whom have applied to be present, but have been refused), betokens, to my mind, anything but a desire to conduct the present inquiry in an impartial or fearless spirit.
Such being the case—and the Earl of Shaftesbury having checked my father with some considerable degree of warmth in 1858 (see his Lordship's speech, p. 23), when he laid before his Lordship his belief in Bishop Gobat's utter want of veracity—my father ceased to speak to the Earl of Shaftesbury on the affairs of the Society. Dr. M'Caul retained indeed, to his last moments of consciousness, a very sincere and affectionate regard for his early friend, but I have frequently heard him deplore the unhappy bias under which the noble Earl was acting in reference to the conduct of the Jewish Mission.
That my father supposed that Lord Shaftesbury entertained any personal feeling of hostility to the Rosenthals is ridiculous, and contrary to fact (Speech, p. 12). He was contented to wait until, in the course of God's providence, the whole case should be laid before his Lordship, and then he felt convinced that the noble Earl would modify his opinions.
As my father lay upon his death-bed in a state of extreme and final exhaustion, the Earl of Shaftesbury most kindly called at St. Magnus' Rectory to inquire after his health. Had sufficient strength remained, my dear father would doubtless have seen his Lordship, and commended, as a parting legacy, the state of the Jewish Mission to his reconsideration. The effort, however, was too great. Vital powers were well nigh gone. The least disquietude produced terrible fits of sickness, agonising and pitiable to witness; and so my father was obliged to forego the satisfaction of taking leave of his beloved friend, and entreating him to re-establish the Jewish cause, in which, and for which, he had spent his life, upon a more satisfactory basis. He had once regarded the Jewish Mission, especially at Jerusalem, as one of the surest pledges of blessedness to the Church of England. He had the pain of leaving it in a position which he contemplated with grief, as a cause of dishonour rather than of blessedness and strength. Regarding this conviction simply as Dr. M'Caul's own private opinion, it must have been an unspeakable cause of regret to one whose success in bringing Israelites to Christ had been unexampled since the Apostolic times, thus to
- ↑ The Rev. James Cohen writes to the Bishop of Rochester (July 11, 1866), “Except during 1852–3 and 1858–60 I did not see the correspondence at all, except as other Members of the Committee did.” The year 1858 was the very year in which Dr. M'Caul made his last efforts in public and private to obtain a reformation in the affairs of the Jews' Society.
- ↑ “Some three or four gentlemen manage such affairs, and probably the Committee, as such, know nothing at all about the matter.”—“Jerusalem, &c.” p. 24.
