Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Are the Germans the Chosen People?: Address Delivered at the Business Men's Club, Cincinnati, January 28th, 1918
The statement has been made frequently of late years that the modern Germans in their claim that they are God's chosen people are the latter day counterpart of the ancient Jews, who are thus termed in the Bible. Preachers and writers in Germany make the direct comparison in unmistakable terms as when one of these preachers declares unreservedly: As was Israel among the heathen, so is Germany amongst the nations, the pious heart of Europe, and another asserts no less apodictically: In a moment we, the children of modern humanity, have become the heir of Israel, the people of the Old Testament. We shall be the bearers of God's promises, the living proof that it is not man who creates history, but God through man. The conviction that they are the chosen people -of these latter ages has become a leading article of German belief; it has imbued the German peo ple with a feeling of superiority over all other nations; they have become obsessed with the idea that they are God's favorites; they speak of God as the. German God, implying thereby that other peoples are without the pale of His special concern.
It is, however, not only Germans who have instituted the comparison between themselves and ancient Israel in this matter of being God's chosen people, but leading speakers and thinkers in other lands, when discussing the state of the modern German mind, are fond of adducing the same comparison. It was only recently that I heard a distinguished American professor say this emphatically and without modification. As I listened to his words the thought presented itself forcibly to my mind that this frequently reiterated statement could and should be subjected to careful examination. For I felt that this comparison was super ficial and far from the truth inasmuch as the term chosen peo ple received an entirely different interpretation by the leading spirits of ancient Israel, namely the prophets, from that given it by the spokesmen of modern Germany as revealed in the writings and utterances of the foremost framers of opinion in that realm in recent days.
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