Chapter 17: Why The Persecution Of The Jew?

WHOSO READETH LET HIM UNDERSTAND - Chapter 17.

WHY
THE PERSECUTION OF
THE JEW?

IN CONSIDERING this subject it must be distinctly understood that the term Jew is really a misnomer. It is not the Jew as a person that is meant, it is Judaism. Judaism stands as the cause and what is called the Jew is merely the effect.
It is in this sense and this sense alone that the word Jew is used in this article, and in its place Judaism should be substituted, for only by so doing can the impersonal nature of the subject be understood and a right attitude be gained.
When the metaphysician speaks of country, race or people, whether called Germany, or Jew, or Israelites or any other, he is not talking about personality. He is considering states of mind or arguments. All that he is cognizant of is an argument being presented. No one would even know

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that there was any Europe or Germany or Jew, unless it came as consciousness to him, and came as his own consciousness, as his mind, in the form of an argument. As Christian Scientists you acknowledge this.
Human thought at this time is tremendously stirred and there is a deep desire to understand this problem of the Jews. Why should the Jews be selected for such barbarous persecution as is taking place in many countries today?
No persecution is really barbarous, because every circumstance or experience is really the pressure of Truth forcing the victim higher, and the pressure continues only so long as there is something to press, something resisting.
Mrs. Eddy presents this very forcibly in her Message for 1901. “In Christian Science it is plain that God removes the punishment for sin only as the sin is removed—never punishes it only as it is destroyed, and never afterwards; hence the hope of universal salvation.” It makes no difference what the experience, it is the pressure of Truth to force you to higher levels of understanding. But the present question perplexing people is, “Why the world rebellion against the Jew?”
A brief analysis of what is called Bible History may clear up the matter. Abraham stood

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as the light of the world, he obeyed the voice of God, going out from his father’s house—matter —into a land that he knew not of—Mind, and so he won the promise, “In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
Now Abraham, from the finite viewpoint seemed to show forth two mental qualities or characteristics,—the one material and the other spiritual; or as Paul puts it, “Thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”
With this light of the world called Abraham, there finally seemed to come what might be called a distinct cleavage. In due time what seemed the material and the spiritual phases of Abraham were expressed by two kingdoms. The kingdom of Judah seemed to take the material course and the kingdom of Israel, the spiritual. This of course was all in the domain of thought, and indeed is present at this moment, operating as consciousness with each individual.
The kingdom of Judah was represented by the tribe of Judah—of which the Jew is the direct descendant, together with a portion of the tribe of Benjamin. The kingdom of Israel was represented by the ten tribes, later called “the lost tribes” or “lost sheep of the house of Israel.
According to prophecy these latter tribes were

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to be gathered in the “Isles afar off” and to be known by a new name. Thence the branch was to grow over the wall and extend to the ends of the earth, whence Shiloh, t he final revelation of Truth, was to come.
All this seemingly has been fulfilled to the letter. The Ten Tribes or House of Israel were gathered in the British Isles. Their new name was Anglo-Saxons or Isaacsons, sons of Isaac. Ephraim, the younger, was the branch that grew over the wall and took root in America. From America has come Shiloh, “and unto him shall the gathering of the people be,” in other words, Science and Health, the Comforter, which Jesus said would lead unto all truth.
Judah, the Jew, and Israel, Anglo-Saxondom, in the broad sense are brethren, and the Christian Scientist understands this.
Israel was divided into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel under Rehoboam, son of Solomon, and the Bible narrative clearly maintains the distinction between these two kingdoms and between the promises which are made concerning each, in all later prophecies.
Judah, with its brilliant materialism, expressed from the beginning the material phase of Abraham. Anything of Abraham must be brilliant, whether it be material or spiritual.

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This material brilliancy represented by Judah has been the envy of many mortals, inciting their jealousy and resentment.
Jesus came of the royal line of David who was of the tribe of Judah. Jesus was the highest human concept, the Way-shower or Exemplar, but he was not the full consummation of the Saviour. He represented the personal, and personality is a phase of materiality which must disappear before the impersonal or Mind-sense of the Saviour can appear in its fullness. Knowing this Jesus said, “It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
The spirit of Truth was to come, as Jacob originally foresaw, through Israel not through Judah, as Shiloh, impersonality, not personality. It came first as America, and then as Science and Health.
But Judah to this day has held tenaciously to its brilliant materiality. It has been a leader in the material world and succeeded on material lines, but has never been able to compete with or conquer spiritual Israel, because spirituality is always more advanced, hence more powerful than materiality. Spiritual Israel cannot be conquered. That is the reason Anglo-Saxondom,

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representing Israel, entertains no fear of nor hatred for the Jew. It cannot, for Abraham, “Fidelity; faith in the divine Life and in the eternal Principle of being” as Science and Health defines Abraham, is the father of both their common heritage.
Discrediting Judah, which represents the other branch of Abraham which will finally be united with Israel in the New Jerusalem of understanding, is abnormal and the result of malicious mind. Brilliant materialism and brilliant spirituality go hand in hand until finally materialism is translated back to Mind. The transient, false sense of matter as something to be accumulated, will eventually be uncovered and matter, as such, will no longer be desired.
As already seen the one thing that is not afraid of Judah, with all its material ability, is spirituality. All others who themselves trust to material sense are afraid as well as jealous of the Jew, —afraid that his genius for materiality will appropriate everything.
You ask why the Jew should be persecuted for profiting in materiality? The answer is: The Jew is bringing this persecution upon himself, but not on account of his possession of material things, which he, like all other mortals, is entitled to if he earns them. Material wealth is

142not, after all, a thing—it is a state of mind. Why should we not wish God-speed unto all in gaining wealth? You would limit no one in attaining the multiplication table, because you are not afraid that someone else’s having it would deprive you of it.
But the difficultly with the Jew is all within himself. He refuses to listen to that inward voice of Spirit, which is always present with him because he is of the seed of Abraham. Instead, he has become absorbed in the one purpose of gaining material prosperity to the neglect of spiritual growth. When Judah decides that he has had enough of materiality and puts forth sincere effort to cultivate his innate spiritual sense, then the persecution will cease, because there is no further purpose in it. As Mrs. Eddy says, in Miscellany, “When these things cease to bless, they will cease to occur.” If you think the Jewish persecution has anything to do with Germans of Italians or any other race, as persons, you are denying the allness of the one Mind, the one infinite Person.
When you receive punishment, it is because you have let in the foe,—you have listened to the directed malicious arguments of limitation that would rob you of health, wealth and happiness.
Do not think you can escape meeting these

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insidious arguments coming as your ego, your I, any more than Judah can escape refuting eventually the suggestions that now make him say, “I will not listen to the voice of Spirit.” It is the unwillingness of Judah to let spirituality, his heritage from Abraham, govern, that is the cause of all his troubles.
The same malicious animal magnetism that caused the Jews to persecute and crucify Jesus is now causing and for centuries has caused the Germans and others to persecute him.
It was not the Jew who originated the deviltry loosed upon Jesus, and it is not persons or races who are responsible for like deviltry today. All are victims of malicious mind, “the great dragon . . . called the Devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world.”
This thought is elucidated in Science and Health in the statement, “It is the animal instinct in mortals, which would impel them to devour each other and cast out devils through Beelzebub.” And again, “The author is convinced that the accusations against Jesus of Nazareth and even his crucifixion were instigated by the criminal instinct here described.”
During the world war, when Germany seemed to be trying to destroy the English language —the clothing of Science and Health, “the young

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child”—you understood that it was not Germany but the activity of malicious evil. Neither Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini nor any other person is responsible for the confusion of the world today. Take the entire condition of world affairs back to God and uncover the arguments of reversal as the operation of malicious malpractice, and you find the solution of the whole affair. Do this if you would destroy every mirage of evil.
Jesus said, “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” This being so, cannot we leave the punishment of all sin to that divine Principle that punishes only to the point of the destruction of the error? The “son of perdition,” the one sinner, will, as Science and Health points out, “receive its full penalty, both for what it is and for what it does.”
If any of you have been tempted to make these questions personal resist the suggestion vigorously and at once. Just ask yourself the question, “Am I, too, a vicious malpractitioner, or am I a Christian Scientist?” Is any of it “over there” or is it all “here”?
How is the cause of Christian Science to go forward if the metaphysician allows himself to be mesmerized into dealing with person, place or

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thing instead of going through to God as All-in-all? When you stop short of God, then, do not be surprised if you experience confusion—sin, sickness or death—for how can you be saved from it if you open the door to it?
Remember, as Mrs. Eddy points out in Miscellany, “Animal magnetism, in its ascending steps of evil, entices its victim by unseen, silent arguments.”
Considering a subject like this compels the Christian Scientist t o realize how dangerous it is for him to talk about what appear as personalities.
The whole tendency, unless most carefully guarded against, is to mesmerize one into thinking in terms of “over there” or “out there,” and such thinking can only end in confusion. In fact it is not really thinking at all, it is just dreaming.
You know there is no Jewish race “over there” which is being punished in order to make it regain its spirituality as the “seed” of Abraham. There is nothing “out there” to be punished; what good would that do? Am I not the one who has to do the regaining if I believe that anything has been lost? Am I not the thief if I believe in thieving? Did not Jesus say “And I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me”? Was not this lifting up from the “earth” being

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lifted above the mesmerism that there is something apart from one, here and now?
For progress it is essential for the Christian Scientist to be ever on guard, for malicious mental malpractice is based on personalities and an “Over there,” instead of the eternal heavenly “here” which embraces within itself the right sense of “here,” all good.
It is impossible to emphasize too strongly the great need to avoid all “over there.” In Christian Science it is all “here” and “now.” If it were not here and now you could have no cognizance of anything. You know this. Then see that you do not supply malicious mind with this chord of belief in an “over there,” on which to play its tune of evil suggestion.

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