Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Poole W. H.
Title : Anglo-Israel of the Saxon race
Year : 1889

Link download : Poole_W_H_-_Anglo-Israel_of_the_Saxon_race.zip

Introduction. The history of God's chosen people Israel can never be a subject of indifference to the Christian mind. The indebtedness of Christendom to this race can never be computed nor repaid. Through it came chiefly the oracles of God to man. Through it came the institutions, the jurisprudence, the philosophy which largely mould the thought of all Christian nations to-day. Yet no race was ever repaid with blacker ingratitude for the benefits which it conferred. The tale of its persecution by fire and faggot, by rack and dungeon, is one of the darkest pages in European history. Pillaged and plundered, scattered and peeled, branded and mutilated, smitten by every hand and execrated by every lip, the Jews seemed to bear in all its bitterness of woe, the terrible curse invoked by their fathers, "His blood — the blood of the Innocent One — be upon us and our children." Trampled and beaten to the earth, decimated and slaughtered, they have yet, like the trodden grass tliat ranker grows, increased and multiplied in spite of their persecution. Those “Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind” exiled from the home of their fathers, and harried from land to land, have verily eaten the unleavened bread and bitter herbs of bondage, and drunken the waters of Marah. In many foreign lands they have sat beside strange streams and wept as they remembered Zion. “They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure. Ghetto and Judenstrass, In mirk and mire; Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, The wasting famine of the heart they fed, And slaked its thirst with Marah of their tears. Anathema maranatha! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where'er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. Far in the background figures vague and vast Of patriarchs and prophets rose sublime, And all the great traditions of the past They saw reflected in the coming time. And thus forever with reverted look The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book. Till life became a legend of the Dead." Yet in return for such persecution, the Jews conferred unspeakable benefits upon mankind. Great numbers of them came to Spain with the Saracens. They became the first and, for a long time, the only physicians of Europe. They enriched the materia medica with discoveries of chemistry^ in which they were expert. The healing art was previously obscured and debased by magic, sorcery, and empiricism. The system of supernaturalism, which universally obtained, was first assailed by the practical science of the Jews. Their rationalistic diagnosis relieved disease of its spiritual terrors, and sapped the foundation of superstition in Europe, as Christian science is at present doing in India. This, and their great wealth, made them the frequent victims of the Inquisition. Notwithstanding, some of them became the private physicians even to the Popes who persecuted their race. They taught in the Rabbinical schools of Italy, Sicily, and France, as well as in Spain. Persecution and travel sharpened their naturally acute intellects, so that they early got control of the greater part of the commerce of Europe. It has been truly said, "They were our factors and bankers before we knew how to read." The Spanish religious wars drove many from that country and dispersed them through Europe, to which they gave an intellectual impulse, which it feels to this day. Jewish influence also contributed to mediaeval thought a tinge of Oriental mysticism. The turbid stream of cabalistic philosophy intoxicated some of the noblest minds of Europe. The wild and fantastic theories of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians, of Cornelius Agrippa and Jacob Behmen, concerning the various orders of elementary spirits, emanations from the deity — a mixture of fanaticism and imposture — were also founded upon the reveries of the cabala. That theophanic system, in its turn, was linked with the venerable Oriental lore of ancient sages on the banks of the Ganges and the Oxus. The influence of Hebrew thought and of the Eastern imagery and language of the Sacred Scriptures upon the Christian system of theology opens up a vast and varied field of investigation. It might be found that many of our common and controlling thoughts have their roots far back in remote Oriental antiquity. Assuredly it would appear that that Syrian faith, which began first to be preached at Jerusalem, has been more potent in its influence on the heart and mind of Christendom than all the lore of Greece or Rome, or than all the combined wisdom of the Orient and Occident besides. It has been the great seminal principal from which has sprung all that is best in all the literatures and philosophies, in all the systems of ethics and jurisprudence, in all the political and social economies of the world since its promulgation. It has ennobled, dignified, and elevated them all. It is the hope, and the only hope, for the regeneration of the race. If such profound interest is felt with reference to the Jews, whose history we know, still more absorbing will be to many the identification with the dominant race of Christendom — ^that English-speaking race that is filling the world with its renown and civilization— of those Lost Tribes of Israel, whose mysterious fate has been the cause of so much speculation and learned research. Of the many books written upon this subject, we know of none which treat it more comprehensively, more ably,, more eloquently, than the present volume. Personally we do not feel competent to discuss this vast and various theme, nor to judge, without ampler study than we have been able to give, of the validity of the arguments with which the fascinating theory of this book is sustained. But we can certainly commend the vigour and vivacity of style, the wealth of illustration, and the breadth of learning with which Dr. Poole maintains his thesis, whether one fully accepts it or not No English-speaking reader can fail to have his patriotic pulses stirred with a grander pride than that of the great apostle of the Gentiles as he asserted his free-born Roman citizenship. For we are the subjects of an empire which dwarfs into insignificance that of Rome in its palmiest days — an empire upon which the seal of divine approval has been signally placed — an empire with which the highest destinies of the ages are fraught — an empire into whose keeping God has committed the “gates” of the earth. W. H. WITHROW. ...