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No one, however, can study the development of Protestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into the Reforrmation, too, Hebraizing child of the Renascence and offspring of its fervor, rather than its intelligence, as it undoubtedly was, the subtle Hellenic leaven of the Renascence found its way, and that the exact respective parts, in the Reformation, of Hebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to separate.
The student of human culture will trace among such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce the name of Jehovah; and hence we may perhaps have before us the ultimate source of the horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards such forms of light swearing "Mon Dieu," etc. as are still tolerated on the continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in Puritanic England and America.
The Reformation has been often called a Hebraizing revival, a return to the ardor and sincereness of primitive Christianity.
Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of human nature which was unsound, for the world could not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraizing enemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's development, it was premature.
It was a reaction of Hebraism against Hellenism; and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural, in a people with much of what we call a Hebraizing turn, with a signal affinity for the bent which, was the master-bent of Hebrew life. This turn manifested itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in shaping our history for the last two hundred years.
Spurgeon, to Hebraize; but for Liberal statesmen to Hebraize is surely unsafe, and to see poor old Liberal hacks Hebraizing, whose real self belongs to a kind of negative Hellenism a state of moral indifference, without intellectual ardour is even painful."
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