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Page 4 The Southern Israelite if I Were a Christian- Abstract of Sermon by RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE Before the Free Synagogue, Carnegie Hall, New York, N. Y. If it were fitting that I should— and if I were free to—deal with the many problems suggested by my theme, “If I Were a Christian,” I would pause to consider certain ques tions which men face. The first of these is implicit in the substitution of church and ecclesiasticism of dog ma and its compulsions for what were the faith and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Obvious it is that the so- called priestly system was not an ex clusively or particularly Jewish vice, but is one of the human evils bound up with the government of churches, whether pre-Christian or Christian. Nineteen hundred years after the be ginning of the Christian era, a Jew cannot help noting that while Judaism has largely disfranchised itself from the evil, the church, which has grown out of—and away from —the teaching of Jesus, is encumbered by ecclesias tics and ecclesiastism as the Syna gogue never was. If I were a Christian, I could hardly help wonder at the great gulf that has become fixed between such unity and comradeship of the disciples of Jesus as ho commended to them and the endless multiplication throughout the centuries of Christian churches and sects and denominations,—much of denominationalism growing up, as the very term implies, around names. If I were a Christian I should grieve— as indeed I do, although a Jew—over the contradiction between the word of him who is called the founder of Christianity, “Love ye one another,” and the presence of a military guard at the Church of the Nativity in Beth lehem to keep the priests of different groups of Christendom from slaying one another. If I were a Christian, I should re joice in Saint Francis, but I should sorrow aver a pact made by the church of St. Francis with Mussolini. If I were a Christian, I should have high pride in Aquinas and Augustine, but I should confess to shame over the immeasurable infamy of Torqueman- da, in truth of the Torquemadas, big and little, who have been persecutors and destroyers of the brothers of Jesus in the name of Christianity. If I were a Christian, I should pray that the Christian church or churches might supplement the recital of the beatitudes by one clear call for peace, not haggling and chaffering over the instrumentalities of war but moving resistlessly towards the ineffable triumphs of peace. If I were a Chris tian, I should wish to see my church hospitable rather than hostile to truth; for inhospitality to truth, or even the truthseeker, is not a token of self-sufficing strength but of self- contemptuous weakness and coward ice. If I were a Christian, I should give heed to the Jewish problem be cause the attitude of men to the Jew is always a test of the reality of moral standards and religious claims of civilization itself. For Christian ity’s sake, I would not have Christen dom judged by its attitude toward the jew,—a.though in truth there are, happily, multitudes of exceptions to unchristian attitude. In many ways, alas, the attitude of Christendom to the Jew may be test ed. First, there is the unashamed persecution of Jews in unenlighten ed or half-enlightened lands, whether that persecution take the form of the numerous clauses in Hungary, of the economic boycott in Poland, or of the student warfare of Christians upon Jews in Roumania. If I were a Chris tian, as I am a Jew, I should say “There are the real stigmata of Christ.” If I were a Christian, I should con cern myself not only with the obvi ous brutalities and the unashamed indecencies of attitude on the part of the so-called Christian countries in Central and Eastern Europe, but I should be no less concerned about the silent pogroms and the bloodless dis criminations and the politer but no less fatal proscriptions practiced against the Jews in lands of civiliza tion, things which are not to be con travened because a few favored and, for one reason or another, powerful Jews are, or believe themselves to be, exempt from the operations 0 » the law of Christlessness as prac ticed in Christendom. If I W( , re ’ Christian, I should be ashamed of th« cruelty of a myriad thoughts and words and acts of the Christian world which are ruthlessly and devesul ingly anti-Jewish, the chiefest out come of which is to evoke either the self-contempt of the surviving f ew or the moral destruction of the un resisting many. If I were a Christion, as I am a Jew, I should feel deeply ashamed of the reaction of much of the so- called Christian world to the anti- Jewish needs wrought in Palestine some months ago, even though this reaction be abetted or half-justified by the self-betrayal of a few out standing Jews. The truth is that Christendom, for the largest part, has given of its sympathy and goodwill to them that have warred against the Jews in Palestine rather than to the Jews who have been warred upon A terrible anti-Jew ill will has been revealed by individuals and groups and journals within the Christian world which have borne themselves as if Jews were ruthless invaders and despoilers of Palestine and slayers of its people. The Jews in Palestine are there of right and not by sufferance, and yet a most distinguished Christian, Kirby Page, though finding it in h;s heart to set up a contrast between (Continued on Page 12) _HL One Stop Service All These Services at one Slop 1. Tires and tubes 2. Tire repairing 3. Recapping 4. Oil and gasoline 5. Car washing 6. Lubricating 7. Battery service 8. Brake service 9. Rims and rim parts 10. Road service 11. Air and water 12. Crank case service 13. Storage. Tli«» Most ComplHo Olio-Slop Sorvioo Station in Atlanta NOW OPEN! 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