processes and of the Jewish discipline; and give it back to Gentiles in the form of pure religion. Humanity can become an organic body only when its circulatory apparatus becomes well established.
The possibility of performing the true function of the Reformer does not depend on any particular opinion about the Bible, or any other book. Nor does it depend on either following or abjuring any given mode of conducting ritual, nor on the possession of any special item of knowledge. No persons ever performed that function more efficiently than did the compilers of the Pentateuch (whoever they may have been); in their day there was no Bible, either to believe or to disbelieve. Jesus performed it; and if any fact is known about him, it is that he took the ritual just as he found it; conforming to established custom whenever his doing so did not interfere with honesty or charity, and laying no great stress on any details. Moses Mendelssohn may be said to have been actually the heart and lungs of the Berlin thought-life of his day. Now he was a learned Talmudist, and his co-religionists had no fault to find with his ideas of ritual.
The possibility of being a true world-reformer does not depend on occupying any particular position in the thought-world. The possibility of performing that function at all depends on having ideas about the nature of truth which are living, in contradistinction to such as are dead. The possibility of performing it properly depends on having ideas which are rhythmic, in contradistinction to such as are jerky or lawless. The nearer a man approaches to the possibility of having ideas which combine the characteristics of being
