OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO THE JEWS.

It is the business of mind to follow facts and mark their results. The Jewish nation had an existence prior to the Augustan or Athenian age, and was far ahead of either in civilization and morality. The Jewish people have often been reprobated, as a people almost without literature, art and civilization, but we are persuaded that it is base ingratitude upon the part of any scholar living in a civilized land to speak of that ancient family thus in terms of reproach. What are the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments but Hebrew productions? It certainly corresponds with infidelity to speak contemptuously of the people who, more than all others, were under the influence of those scriptures for ages in the past, and who were the chosen people through whom they were to be given to the world of mankind. The Hieroglyphics of Egypt, and the Classics of Greece, are perishable monuments constructed in memory of intelligence and civilization, when compared with the undying influence of the Bible upon the hearts of the millions who resort to it to find their way through life. For one edition of the classics we have had ten thousand Bibles. Why is this?

Men of the profoundest wisdom have investigated the claims of the Bible upon the attention of the literary and scientific, upon the attention of the moral and civil in every nation. They tell us that its morality and theology are far superior to the teachings of any and all of the ancient teachings of the greatest known philosophers, and that the writings of those philosophers are much inferior to those of Moses and the prophets. The poetry and philosophy of the Hebrews, as presented in the Bible, surpasses Homer and Aristotle. And their independent religion, existing amidst the heathenism of the surrounding pagan nations, was the only religion calculated, by virtue of its "one God" to worship, to unite the human family in one great brotherhood. It is conceded upon all sides that the Bible is the most remarkable book that the world ever read. How base and unjust is it, therefore, to be speaking reproachfully of the Hebrews as a nation. We should remember them with great kindness for the inestimable treasures of wisdom and knowledge handed to the people of the ages through them. To them the whole Christian world is indebted for its morality and civilization. Even Thomas Paine got his notions of civil government from the Pentateuch. If you doubt this read his work entitled "Common Sense," and you will doubt it no more.

Jewish writings and American life and character are very intimately blended, and we can not separate them without being guilty of great injustice. "If British, Scottish, Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman blood runs through our veins, our minds have been cast in a Hebrew mould." To this cause we owe the most of our greatness as a nation.