the atonement, if it is to be real, must emanate from principle, and not from ritual and transitory emotion? If, then, we do know it, let us have the moral courage to put our knowledge into practice, and to divorce ourselves completely from the error that the fast of itself constitutes expiation for sin. Let us cast behind us this delusion of superstition, and do homage to the revealed truth that beyond the range of all externals, Judaism places a circle. of ethics broader and deeper than ritualistic practice. The D, or atonement, which God demands must spring from our moral faculty, and the worship He requires must be interpenetrated by the conviction that He distinguishes between what the lips can utter and the strain which the physical frame can support, and between what the heart feels and the free and unfettered will determines to perform.

There is not one amongst us, I am persuaded, to whom the force of these reflections, based on what Holy Scripture teaches, does not come home. How is it, then, that despite our knowledge, so many of us have failed in years gone by to secure the gracious boon of the Day of Atonement, but have returned to our homes with a result scarcely differing from that which awaited the fasting worshippers. described in the section which we have been examining out of the book of Isaiah ?

For an answer to this important question we need go no farther in search than to our own consciousness. We have fallen into the habit of persuading ourselves that though we defer our reformation for awhile, we shall ultimately redeem

what we have lost, piece together again what we have disrupted of a Jewish life, and finally, make a perfect atonement before the Lord. In this way we go through life influenced by mixed motives, and the best and the worst features of our humanity continue in a state of conflict. Well, Congregants, it cannot be out of place to ask, whether this

day is to close over us, and to leave us in the same spiritual condition as the close of the last? If so, it might almost lead us to distrust our moral convictions, and to regard our holiest feelings as shadows and delusions. Surely this putting off our amendment to some indefinite time which we insure to ourselves, conveys anything but the reflex action which the Day of Atonement is intended to produce. Never can a course like this, which we are shaping out in imagination, bring us back to God. Left to itself sin will not, cannot, work out its own remedy, but will wax stronger and more persistent from the procrastination on which it feeds. An effort must be made to overcome it, and such an effort necessarily involves some self-sacrifice.

What has just been advanced ought not in any way to discourage us on our pilgrimage to-day to the throne of mercy. Indeed, so far from repelling, it might well fortify us to make such an effort as the Day of Atonement demands, because the doctrine which has been set forth raises our estimate of the religion which we profess, when we discover it to be inseparable from the loftiest code of ethics. If the Jewish religion had been nothing more than the embodiment of Levitical ordinances and a conglomeration of mechanical performances;

if it enjoined no higher worship than the utterance of the lips, and no sanctity superior to a day's abstinence from food, it never would, and never could, have exerted the influence which it has wrought in the moral world. Never could it have prosecuted its grand mission, swayed the minds and the hearts of a hundred generations, and proved instrumental, as it has done, in making its principles thrill through every fibre of man's moral and intellectual life.

True it is that our religion enlists into its service certain ritual auxiliaries, such as are in operation in the atonement solemnities of to-day; nay, more, our Scriptures impart to the ritual itself a positive sanctity, inasmuch as it serves as an outer shell to prevent the essential ethical spirit from evaporating. But, alas! for us, if we fail to recognise practically that Judaism has a worship which towers high above all ritual economy, and that is the worship of the heart.

Impressed, therefore, with the wide distinction between the symbols of atonement and the atonement itself, as well as between a professed and a realised sense of religion, let us approach the sacred shrine with the fixed purpose to amend our ways and to renounce in future what we are about to proclaim in our confessional as sinful deeds. If the holy and merciful and merciful One that helps us in our struggles with inward and outward evils, shall have touched our spirits to-day through the operation of His revealed word, and shall have aroused in us an unction of which we may not have been susceptible on the Kippour days

that are gone, let us profit by the present moment ere the spiritual impulse subsides. Moral philosophy teaches that it is possible for the human mind to put forth a strong effort which may prove the seminal and prolific source of a pure and peaceful life but such an effort is seldom long sustained. It may reach an unwonted elevation, but it only maintains it for a short time. Let us all devoutly pray that from this day we may be moved

,נר

לרגלינו ואור לנתיבתנו to make God's law

1

lamp for our feet, and a light for our path." And may He who imparts thought to the mind and speech to the tongue convert our reflections of this hour to our spiritual good. The manner in which we employ our present (and who shall ensure to himself the return of another?), the motives that influence us, and the silent prompting of our hearts in the conflict between what Moses describes as “life and death" (12) "), may tend more to secure what we have come here to obtain, than all the prayers we may pour forth, or the physical mortification we may endure. We have but to act on the

2

no * כי מצותיך לא שכחתי,closing words of our text

longer to be unmindful of God's commandments," and then we may in future recall this day and

bless it as one of the most precious of our lives. The remembrance of it will enable us to pass happily and usefully through what remains of our allotted years, and as we close our mortal account we shall feel that the earth only recedes to bring to our spirit eternal peace.

1 Psalm cxix. 105.

2 Deut. xxx. 15.

XIX.

ON THE ULTIMATE OUTCOME OF

JUDAISM.

PREACHED ON THE FIRST DAY OF PASSOVER, 5644 (1884).

כל גוים אשר עשית יבואו וישתחוו לפניך אדני ויכבדו לשמך : כי גדול אתה ועשה נפלאות אתה אלהים

לברך

"All nations whom Thou hast made shall come and worship before Thee, and shall do honor to Thy name. For Thou art great, and doest wondrous things: Thou Alone art God."

WE are met, Congregants, to-day, to commemorate an event consecrated by lofty and endearing recollections and by a long succession of associated ideas. The scene of the Exodus, as described in the Scripture section which has been just read from the desk, preserves still all the freshness of its colouring and as we follow the migratory movement of the Israelites from Rameses, we can hardly fail to note that it implies something more than the transplanting of a race from one land to another. A remarkable revolution has in a few hours been operated in the destiny of the Hebrew people! A new phase of being has opened for them; their thoughts have taken a new bent, and, though probably little apparent to any but Moses himself, a