The Life of Benjamin Disraeli

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: persist in disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race ? Fantastic as Disraeli's view of the true relations of Judaism and Christianity appeared when it was published, and, indeed, to some extent appears...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: persist in disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race ? Fantastic as Disraeli's view of the true relations of Judaism and Christianity appeared when it was published, and, indeed, to some extent appears still, much of it is perfectly sound. That Christianity is the completion of Judaism, and that Judaism ? at any rate the Judaism of the Old Testament ? is undeveloped Christianity, is the teaching of the Bible throughout. But Disraeli, is very unconvincing when he attempts to show that there is no distinction between the morality of the Old Testament and that of the New. The development brought about by Christ was marked in the sphere of morals. Against the story of the lawyer which Disraeli quotes, instances at once rise to the recollection in which the teaching of Christ was after this fashion: ' Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, gave you this commandment; but I say unto you, ' or, ' Ye have heard it said by them of old time; but I say unto you.' And, of course, Disraeli's theory has the great weakness of minimising the importance of the fundamental distinction involved in accepting or repudiating the Divinity of Christ. His language sometimes almost suggests that his religion was pure Judaic monotheism, only prolonged and perhaps softened by the teaching of. a great Jewish reformer; and the fact that Christ was the son of Israel seems, now and again, more important than the fact that he is the Son of God. But, when all deductions are made, Disraeli ' rendered a great service to his somewhat intolerant generation by insisting on the intimate relationship between the two religions. It was under the influence of the views which we have set forth at length, and wi..