|
Letter From the Rev. Mr. Marks.
London, January 1st, 5604, (1844.)
To the Editor of the Occident.
Rev.
Sir—I am by no means insensible to your kindness and liberality, in
offering me the use of your widely circulated journal, for the purpose
of repelling charges,—some from ignorance; some from design—which
have been brought against me and my congregation. And if, Sir, I have
not availed myself earlier of your offer, it is because I considered
that the first duties of a minister belong to his own flock, and that
there is less evil in suffering calumny to circulate for a time, than in
engaging in controversies abroad, at the risk of neglecting the
immediate wants of a congregation at home.
I
cannot, however, either in justice to myself, the committee of the West
London Synagogue, or the highly respectable Jewish community of St.
Thomas, suffer the discourteous
letter
of the Rev. Mr. Carillon to pass by, without endeavouring to set
myself right with you, Sir, and the Jewish public, as to the position in
which recent events have placed me with the Synagogue of St. Thomas.
In
February, 1842, a letter was addressed by Mr. A. Wolff of St. Thomas to
Mr. Moses Mocatta of London, congratulating this gentleman upon the part
he had taken in the establishment of the West London Synagogue of
British Jews, and praying him to use every exertion, in order to obtain
a competent minister for St. Thomas, who might be enabled to
carry out there the improvements introduced into the London
Synagogue. "There is a prevailing wish amongst the better informed
part of our congregation," writes Mr Wolff, "to change our
present mode of worship for one more congenial to their feelings; and
which would have a tendency of producing not only the spiritual
consolation which every one has a right to expect in visiting the house
of God, but particularly of impressing upon the minds of the juvenile branches the true tenets of our
blessed and sublime religion." . . . . . "We have hitherto
been debarred from carrying this object into effect, from the difficulty
of finding a minister, competent in every particular to take the lead,
and who could, in the English language, develop, explain, and invitingly
represent the beauties of the Jewish religion." Mr. Wolff then
appeals, on behalf of himself and colleagues, to Mr. Mocatta, to procure
for the Synagogue of St. Thomas "a minister of gentlemanly
deportment, possessing a thorough knowledge of the English language, a
strict Mosaic believer, a liberal man, who does not place the rabbinical
writings on a level with the Pentateuch; one who feels the difference
between worship and heartfelt religion; a pious man of talent, of a
patient and forbearing temper, always as willing to listen as to be
listened to, and more ready to give instruction than to receive
applause."
This
letter was placed in my hands by Mr. Mocatta, who accompanied it with a
request that I would immediately put myself in communication with the
authorities of the Synagogue of St. Thomas. I accordingly wrote to Mr.
Wolff, expressing my conviction that he had by no means overrated the
qualifications necessary for a Jewish minister; but as no provision had
as yet been made in England for instructing and training youth, in order
to qualify them for Synagogue appointments, I more than doubted the
probability of finding in this country a minister, who would unite the
above and various other qualifications. To render the thing practicable,
I advised that some of the qualifications should be dispensed with,
provided a minister could be procured of tolerable capacity, and
possessing such habits of application and study, that would hold out a
promise of his future improvement.
My
suggestion was approved; and in the following July, I received an
authorization, signed by all the officials of the St. Thomas Synagogue
to engage a minister, at a liberal salary, on my own responsibility. The
same letter brought an order for fifty sets of the Daily, Sabbath, and
Festival Liturgies, as used in the "West London Synagogue of
British Jews."
The
Prayer Books were duly forwarded, and the necessary steps were taken for
obtaining a minister; but though there
were many applications for the appointment, from men of unquestioned
piety and learning, not one of the applicants was found capable of
preaching with ease and fluency in the English language.
Not
having succeeded in securing the services of an eligible minister, and
the Synagogue of St. Thomas having been for many months without a
reader, the congregation, as Mr. Wolff informed me, determined to
receive back the Rev. Mr. Carillon, who had made an application to be
re-engaged, declaring at the same time that he had made considerable
improvement in the English language, as well as in other matters
connected with his vocation. Mr. Wolff's letter conveys to me also the
intelligence, that on and after Passover, 5603, the forms and services
of the West London Synagogue would be adopted by the congregation of St.
Thomas.
Since
this I have not been honoured with any official communications from St.
Thomas; nor have I been enabled to gather any information of its
Synagogue movements, save through the columns of "Les Archives
Israelites," "The Occident,'' and "The Voice of
Jacob."
From
the above plain statement, it will be seen that the members of the West London Synagogue of British Jews did
not intrude their views nor their formularies upon the Synagogue of St.
Thomas; but that our West Indian co-religionists, anxious to introduce
into their house of prayer the same mode of worship that obtains in
ours, and desirous of obtaining a more competent minister than the one
they possessed in the Rev. Mr. Carillon, sought our aid to enable them
to accomplish those objects.
I
will not do the authorities of the Synagogue of St. Thomas the injustice to identify them in any way with the
letter of Mr. Carillon, published in the Occident of Tishri last, nor to
suppose that they at all sanction the course pursued by their minister.
The letters from Mr. Wolff and his colleagues breathe invariably a
spirit of unobtrusive piety and fraternal love, and they, moreover, mark
their writers with the genuine credentials of gentlemen and scholars.
Now to all this Mr. Carillon's letter presents so wide a contrast, that
I cannot but look upon his epistle as essentially his own,
and by no means embodying the sentiments of the wardens, from whose
suavity and gentlemanly bearing, the Rev. Mr. Carillon may derive a most
useful and profitable lesson.
I
have deemed it right to make these facts known, to order to have done,
once for all, with those insinuations which from time to time are
whispered forth, as though the members of our congregation had sought by
indirect or unfair means to propagate the system of our worship.
That
"almost every one" of the families of the island was in
possession of our ritual,* and that the leaders were desirous of
adopting the same publicly, at the time of Mr. C.'s return, is a
pleasing proof of the intrinsic merit of our Prayer Book, which though
proscribed and excommunicated by those who consider proscription and
excommunication religious behests, endeared itself to the community of
St. Thomas, by the simplicity of its forms, and the purity of its
contents. That the Rev. Mr. Carillon found means to overrule the
predilection of his flock for the improved ritual, does honour, I admit,
to his powers of persuasive eloquence, and claims my admiration for the
zeal with which he must have combated the efforts of his conscientious
flock, on behalf of what they conceived to be a more edifying form of
worship.
I
cannot, however, say as much for the reasons which, according to
the reverend gentleman's statement, influence him to reject the
obnoxious book. Had he kept secret his reasons, every liberal man
would have considered himself bound to give him credit for sincerity of
purpose and for solidity of argument, in support of the course he chose
to pursue.
But
since the Rev. Mr. C. has published to the world his reasons, and
since I have the presumption to consider his published reasons
exceedingly shallow, I cannot but conclude that either the minister of
St. Thomas has passed judgment in what he does not understand, or that
he has not put us in possession of his real reasons. If so, the
most instructive part of his pastorale is yet to come, and all that he
has hitherto said is mere φλυαρα.
Note
by the Editor.—We regret being compelled to postpone the remainder
of Mr. Marks's letters to our next number, as we have to add some
remarks of our own, and our space this month prohibits us from doing it
at the present moment.
(To
be continued.) |
