^215:1 For eighteen centuries, more or less, the belief that the God of the Jews is the God of the Universe, and that the Jewish Scriptures are the "Word of God," has lain like an incubus on the thought and conscience of the West. The time has come for criticism to say plainly that until this incubus has been finally exorcized, the higher thought of the West will not be able to awake from its long and troubled sleep. The Jewish conception of a God who is at once national and universal, is a remarkable, and, as far as it goes, a valuable contribution to the religious development of Humanity. But, standing as it does midway between a frankly national and a genuinely universal conception of God, it is obviously a resting-place for religious thought and aspiration, rather than an abiding home. The Scriptures which record the sayings and doings of this hybrid Deity, hold a place in the esteem and affection of Christendom which makes criticism difficult and praise impertinent. But the time has come to say of them that they have all the defects and limitations of their Deity, and that to call them, in all seriousness, the "Word of God" is to emphasize the narrowness and shallowness of one's own conception of the Divine. What one cannot insist on too forcibly is that the cramping and warping influence of Jewish ideas and ideals makes itself felt by the revolutionary, quite as strongly as by the reactionary, school of thought. The "free-thinkers" who reject supernaturalism are with few exceptions, as narrow-minded, as unimaginative, and as dogmatic as the "orthodox" whom they affect to despise. The best that they can do for us, when we turn to them for help and guidance, is to substitute a negative for a positive dogmatism, secularism for superstition, disbelief for unwarranted belief, despair for illusive hope. Meanwhile, the West, with its old ideals discredited, with its old virtues at a discount, with its old faith slowly dying, devotes itself with feverish energy to the pursuit of riches and pleasure.